DUMPS SCANDALS.

Taranaki Daily News, 5 June 1920, Page 9

DUMPS SCANDALS.

AEVIY STORES ROTTING, WHOLESALE THEFTS IN BELGIUM. A REMARKABLE STORY. Fifty million pounds is the best estimate I have yet been able to obtain of the present value of the British goods lying in dumps in the north of France and Belgium i fifteen months after the armistice (wrote a special correspondent to the Daily Mail recently). These goods include everything from bully-bkef to blankets. Incidentally there are at least 5000 motor vehicles among them, of which not a few have been washed during the floods by the waters of the Seine. And a million blankets!

I have qualified that estimate of £">o,000,§00 by saying that it is present value. What the stuff was worth before tlie fall of the French franc any student of exchange may calculate for himself The fall of tlie franc is bad for us because we are selling to-day largely to France—why not to England? —and this, ij, seems, is the official reason why the whole of the Disposals Board headquarters staff in Boulogne I suddenly turned itself about a month ago into tha Directorate-General for the Liquidation of British War Stock, and made haste to Paris.

DUMPS ROBBED RIGHT AND LEFT. But, to get back to the present, vako of the stuff, which the Directorate-Gen-eral is trying to sell to would-be buyers in Parisj Here is another question: What was it worth before the lightfingered gentry of five nations got to work on it? In plain words, Great Britain has bean robbed right and left. Not half an hour ago an Irish private, sitting with the gnity of a descendant of kings in a first-class carriage on the road from Boulogne to Calias, was entertaining me witli an account of his own thefts and his evidence at a court-martial in which he was the chief witness—a court-martial on an officer for selling a British Army motor-car. "And it was moself gave him away," said the Irishman, "because he was a this and a that; otherwise lie would have got clear away with it." "Flogging," is the soldier word for this universal tl.ieving. You "flog" this and "flog" that. If you have a hut near a dump or a hospital you "flog" beds, mattresses, blankets, kitchen stuff. When yon are demobilised you sell to the countryside. If you know anything about horses it is the most naturol thing in the world to pass the word to a friend in England to buy on ypur account amourtt whose merits you have tested. So with a car or motor-cycle; and if it sells cheap because it ift lacking a few parts so much the better for the man who knows where the spare parts are to be bought or found. One of the best of current "jokes" at the expense of the British public is the story of a Frenchman who bought three Army waggons from one dump, sixhorsse from another, and then with a gang, in cast-off or stolen khaki, proceeded to load up corrugated iron sheets at a third, twenty miles away, without a "by your leave" to anyone.

"Why didn't the guard 9top them? Be-; ca\ise the dump hadn't been rationed for two monfhs. Like a good many other little things it had been forgotten in the constant changes of commands, orders, and personnel. The men had had to buy their food for eight weeks, and if they were not overawed by the gang which 'called for' the goods, you may be sure they were looking one way and holding out their hands the other."

GOING TO WASTE. Feeling that an ouncs of fact is worth a pound of talk, I made two personal investigations of dumps. The first was m the Bassin Loubet, a portion of Boulogne's very valuable dock and harbor space to which we laid claim in 1!)14, and which is still in possession of the British Army. Here are rows of sheds filled with I know what not stores for the Army which is still in France. Outside the sheds I found a pile of iron bedsteads rusting in the open. There were not many, but. each one was worth a pound to the nation, and, judging by tlie contents of the furnishing shops in Boulogne, could have been sold a dozen times over, if red tape permitted, on the spot, By far the biggest dump I saw in the Bassin Loubet were piles upon piles of those circular sets of boards ined for the ground-work of bell tents. I had the curiosity to estimate the qualities and found thousands. One who knows -told me that they remain unsold because the valuers put a ridiculous price oil them. They wanted something like the cost,- say £2 10s apiece. The trouble is that no one can make use of them. They ire just fit for the bottoms of Army bell tents and nothing else. "Sell them by the ton," he said, "for firewood, and give the French back the ground we are paying rent for. Whv should thev stand rot-

ting here?" I could not wait three days to get the necessary permit to view the million blankets which I am credibly informed are stacked in some of the slied.i in the Bassin Loubet. They have been pouring in by the truckload for months past. The man who might, or could, have given permission was of course in Paris, called there by the Dircetornt.'-Geiientl of this amazing selling agency. There is a man in Boulogne who .wonted to buy these blankets a good six months ago when there were only half a miilion of them. Nothing doing, of course. The price was just a shade under the valuation. So the poor British public has been hanging on, losing the rent value of the space occupied, losing the interest on the money which would have been paid, losing the value of the francs which will be paid one day no doubt.

ACRES OF EMPTY HUTS. On the top of the hill just past the Petit Cnporal estaminet there are acres of long black huts, line after lino, the ohl veterinary hospital. 1 turned in and walked for a quarter of a mile. Not a sign of life. Just shed after shed, with the old signs showing the forges empty, the feeding troughs empty. All very neat tidy and useless —an ocean of black waste. Lower down the hill towards Pont do Briques stood equallv desolate the ramshackle embankment of the Graves Commission for the area. I passed onwards to my real goal, the RJi- camp at the foot of the hiil. A little gate up the road brought me to the sergeant-major, a war veteran who, taking me for one of those mysterious agents with millions in theii pockets who arc floating through France trying to buy dumps, grew eloquent on the subject of his own pet dump. Jt was the eml of a trying day, and the sergeant-nm|or was frankly fed up, Had he not, as he explained, given up

priceless Christmas leave to catalogue this dump? Anil here it was, still unsold! Not a, wheel in the workshops had turned since November, except when he had, for vjry shame, and with praiseworthy intent to make as good a price as he could for the nation, put his guards ou to turn the wheels by hand! He gave me a rough idea of the dump, the greater part of which we could see from the doorstep of his hut in that cold and darkening valley. Over there were the machine shops, with lathes and other tools; that was the smith's shop with a steam hammer; that the foundry with two cupolas, a cdre oven, and moulding boxes. I took his word for the carpenter,s' shop and the saw-mill with its band-saws and motors; also the transformer house where the current was laid on. I could see the steam rollers rust-

ing in the open and the Decauville light railway track laid ready for sale, the drain pipes, and the wood, which he estimated at 700 tons. The piles of sections in the foreground looked fit for firewood, but had been catalogued as "hutstwo." The sergeant-major believed that was a big provision dump beyond his own—over there!—but he had not had the curiosity to go and see.