ARMY ECONOMICS.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 207, 8 September 1916, Page 3 (Supplement)

ARMY ECONOMICS.

THE PREVENTION OF WASTJS. I have never seen nor imagined aii.vtihug like the boot-repairing factories of the Ordnance Department at certain bases. In the first months of the war (wrlt-es Professor Gilbert Murray n the ; ' Westminster Gazette") the wastage.of boots was notoriously shocking. The boots were of a very high quality, but if anything went wrong with a pair, if it got cut or injured, or if it (I'd not fit properly, it was often sinplv thrown away. It disappeared, i ke so many thousands of rifles and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, in the mud of the Flanders trenches. But now as soon as a boot becomes a casualty—that is, if its master needs it no longer, or if it is judged and condemned en its own merits by a platoon commander —it fs put into a motor or 1 tra : n and sent to the base. It arrives not look'ng its best, and is put at once into a hath of creosote and warm water, where it is scraped clean. It is then carried to a specialist or consultant, who diagnoses its ailments and hangs little marks on it to show exact ly what treatment it needs. Then off it whirls to its place anv.d the vast army of skilled bootmakers. 1 have never seen so many bootmakers together, not even in Massachusetts; but then I have never seen or dreamed of such mountains of old boots. At the end of all when drily soled or heeled or lasted, it has a bath of oil; and when the oil is dry it returns to the front, where public opinion prefers it to a really new boot because it is softer.

AND OTHER ITEMS. And what happens to boots happens also to tools and gas-helmets, and shellcases and cartridge cases, to watches and field-glasses and telescopes, and above all to rifles and ■every description of gun. One. used to hear awful stories of War Office .wastefulness; but after my visits to these Ordnance Depots I shall associate "Them Blighters" with nothing so much as vast and scientific economy. The amount of good material salvaged day by day out of that tornado of waste and destruction at the front is unbelievable. And certainly 1 know of no civilian, however careful, who would think in ordinary life of saving and repairing the sort or thugs which 1 saw kept for repair it that depot. Only the old uniforms were spared. Though rigorously disinfected and baked, they could hope for no future life as uniforms; only as rags or parts of gas-helmets, or consttuents of i)a;ver.

The repair of war, the economief, the tidyings-up; there is something magnificent and paradoxical about them, just as there is about the mercifulness of war. We send these poor boots, or horses, or men, to places where they are sure sooner or later to be badly worn or hacked or broken, and then we spend such infinite ingenuity in helping them back into vigour, and sparing them every unnecessary blow. Of course there is no real inconsistency; only th? healing wisdom of human nature industriously making the host of a very evil job. NEATNESS AMONG RUINS. Tlvmt is a beautiful old town near the, Hoc-lie lines, with its Cathedral and Hotel de V'ille and railway stat'on in utter rums: but most of its deserted houses still standing and the trees m its spring blossom . Hut the most curious thing- next to the inlnbitants who retna'n in the cellars of their houses and live* by scll'ng postcards and fancy stationary to the Brtrsli soldiers —is perhaps the extreme neatness of the ruined streets. The stones that wen once part of houses are enrefully col lected in long rows along the guttei, and tht* whole aspect of. the town ; ? cleaner and tidier now than when its hcases had all their roofs on and its inhabitants were paying and returnm* visits. I suppose there is a degree )f confusion when even an unt'dy man feels that he must clean things up a bit. a degree of waste that makes even thrt prodigal hanker after economy, an enormity of suffering which teaches even the callous man to long for someof healing pain or at least <>t showing mercy.