£80,000,000 WAR BOOTY

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 239, 3 July 1919, Page 5

£80,000,000 WAR BOOTY

NEGLECTED TREASURE ON THE BATTLEFIELD SOME OF THE PRICES I have been spending the botter part of a week •■along the quaysides and sidings of Belgium, especially in the neighbourhood of JJamur,' whero the chief feature of the landscape is booty captured by the British Army from the Germans. Eight hundred barges, carrying up to 800 tons apiece, and 20,000 trucks contain a part of thie trensure, of which the total is worth-I take the lowest of the esh-, mates given by a number of valuers— .£80.000,000. Some of these loads were coming up to supply the German Army; some wero packed ready for.the retreat; some were material previously taken from the Allies either military or civilian, llie variety and mass beggar all description, mid would make the mouth water of the largest and most varied stores in the world. Let me give a list of a few of tho things, many of them in great bulk, that I saw and jotted down at ono dump, and that was not tho biggest:—

Brooms Harness Buckets Afiw™ „ , Trench mirrors (from the Congo) Dried tripe Churns Toilet paper . Oil Water bottles Paint Hammers Shovels Lamps Paper palliasses p um ps Wire-cutters Blunderbuses R«Fts Carbide Paper string Beds Medical stores Spring mattrcses Hula Mouse-traps Field forges Belle Uniforms Rotary pumps Klaxon horns Wheelbarrows Gas-alarm sirens Mosquito netting Lithostoiio print(by the 1000 yds.) "JR prow One barge alone carried nearly 400 tens of iron bolts. We found in one small area 30,000 tens of chicory, 100,000 candles, 1100 tons of soda, 220,0001b. of wood fibre, 200 dynamos, 1000 farm in. struments, 8000 shovels, and as many pickaxes. Tho process of unloading the barges is quite an amazing spectacle. Till it i 6 begun no one knows what the barge may hold; and as a rule, iscept in the case of pig-iron or iron rails, of which the number is immense, tho variety of contents is legion. 90,000 Stoves at One Sale. By far the greater number _ of the things are of German make or origin, but some few are captured goods. In the "Ateliers.de Construction Electriqno" of Charlcroi, which the Germans were already converting into their own factory for producing exnort goods after the war, I found some ot Hornsby's cutters and binders. One dump, again, includes 3000 cases of French tin helmets, and we are rapidly restoring to French and Belgian films stuff and parts of machinery that had 'been Tided from them.

But when all such thtngs <re excepted there remains a colossal total of genuine booty of war that should sell for several score of million pounds. It is amazing to discover how veryo slowly tho worth of all this stuff dawned on authority. Even yet it is being dealt with by a minute staff who aro 100 few to make any satisfactory inventory. While a handful of officers were touring the country trying to find ammunition dumps and guns on tho clue of most muddling wireless messages from the Germans, those invaluablo store* were vanishing under the attacks of time, weather, and especially of numerous pickers up of unconsidered trifles.

In one case 1 have cognisance of a busy public auction held in one'-of the barges which contained an invaluable lead which was much appreciated by the t-eigh-bourhood. Since then we have begun to hold official sales and local auctions, at which good prices have been realised. For example, 90,000 stoves had been sold a few days before I arrived and I saw advertisements of our sales in the Belgian papers. Some of these had bwn attended by a Rumanian buyer, mnoi ? others, but in no case that I heard of had any Etg. lish 'buyer had even the option of attend ing. The absence, of proper inventories has handicapped our salesmen in many ways. In one case, the bids for certain bargeloads of rags soared so high that the auctioneers thought that tho Belgian buyers had lost control of themselves in the ardour of competition. How else would you account for tho rise < f price from a few pounds to .£7O the ton. for rags? But suspicion prompted inquiry, and it was at last discovered by the seller, as it had already been discovered by the buyers (who apparently, , against the usual experience, had the bettor chance of' investigation), tha underneath the rags lay a store of copper.