BAKESHOP MAKES 250,000 LOAVES DAILY.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 14363, 31 July 1917, Page 5

BAKESHOP MAKES 250,000 LOAVES DAILY.

PAiRIS, June 10. My concierge's mother is aged nearly SO. Ever since the first month of the war she has been all alone* inside the German lines with her only son a prisoner m Germany. As soon as her little village was reconquered by the French, my concierge asked permission to go and see her. Nearly all the houses had been destroyed, but hers was still standing a^nd some dozens of her neighbors were sleeping m it. It was m the English lines and, m want of all things, the British troops fed the population from their own rations. My concierge asked his mother ..what struck her most m this change from German soldiers to British soldiers.

"English bread!" she answered. "I did not know bread oould be so good." And all the neighbors licked their lips m approval. The sudden change from their privations under the invader, when they would hove died of starvation if it had not been for the American Relief Obmmission, sharpened their appetites, no doubt. Rut a Swiss doctor, who has had the unusual privilege of visiting m detail tho British base, where the bread is >made, can not say too much m its praise — and of all the other unexpected things which he was permitted to see. "I have been struck by the extraordinary power whicii the English have to improvise things offhand, adapting themselves m circumstances m a surprising manner. For they, too, know how to 'organise.' " \A captain showed the astonished Swiss round the enormous bake^ House. Like the other immense buildings of . the, base, it has been run up since the millions of British soldiers began coming into France. Much of the material, ail tlie tools and workmen — and workwomen— have been brought on from England. No less than "450,000 21b loaves of bread are halved here every day. All this immense quantity .of bread is ' made by hand and it takes 500,000 pounds of wheat iiour daily. There are 600 ovens, each of which .holds 150 loaves. Heated water m a never-ending network of iron pipes takes the place of fire and the baking is done m one hour. The dough is kneaded by soldiers m 650 troughs iv the upper storey of the bakehouse. . They are dressed m white from head to foot and everything around them is kept spotlessly clean, and here all day long they alternate their work wi,th cleaning up. When the dough is risen and ready, the loaves slide down to the ovens on an inclined plane. As tho work is divided up into sections a"nd each batch is numbered, there is no posisbility of shirking. As soon as the loaves are baked, j they are taken out of the ovens and ranged on shelves running the whole length of the building. There is a little railway whioh carts them off m its waggons to be put m sacks and taken to the troops at the front. "The day I" was there," says the Swiss doctor, "I saw 300,000 loaves still warm and smelling deliciously. British soldiers are eating better bread than we do m Switzerland."

Tho Swiss was quite as much astonished when he went on to what looked like a machine shop. "I had before my eyes the biggest heaps of utterly different objects I had ever seen.. It was the accumulation of everything that had been brought back irom the battlefields." Clothes, leather, arms and.' cannons, helmets and wheels and all the rest were there waiting to be examined. Nothing is destroyed unless it can never m any way be used again. 'So, on every battlefield, everything is gathered up. Whatever is found m the German trenches is examined with . particular care. This is "because it may disclose some secret m its making, some improvement m arms or m equipment details. As the Swiss doctor, passed, officers were taking a German machine gun to pieces to see if it did not have something new and interesting. In a single place they pile up trench tools, leather sacks, cartridge 'belts, small guns for shelling, broken or indented helmets, rifles, sabres, bayonets and so on 1 . After a first sorting out each class of objects finds its way to its own special workshop. Women have this job to do and, the Swiss doctor says, "They sing while they do it. And m all the workshops I passed through the work kept time with m.usic ! Workwomen ,take the pieces of leather, scrape and. wash them and dry them, and iron them out, to get all the mud stains of the trenches out of them. "I saw old shoes by the hundreds of thousands^ They are to be mended and re-made and given to a soldier whose own are worn out. When they are too .far gone, shoestrings are made of them by a little machine invented for the purpose. v The same complete overhauling is given to cannons and gun carriages. Immense triphammers give shape to the steel pieces which mend the damaged spots. , .

The Swiss doctor found the sewingroom particularly interesting. Hundreds and hundreds ot women, at hundreds of sewing machines, worked by electricity,'' were occupied at old clothes. They come back from the front like a rag and these women transform them back to coats and trousers. "They are good enough for the trenches," said the captain who was guide. There is a special place for tents. A windlass pulls them up to the ceiling. Then, from underneath, it is easy to see whether anything can be done to make them over. In the "arms room" women see that the guns are discharged — by discharging them. If the rifle can be used again, it is passed on to the proper workmen*.-. If not, it is taken to pieces — and the good pieces are sorted .and kept for use. So it is for everything which is brought back to the base. The Swiss doctor went on to the place where sick and wounded horse 3 are also pulled together and furbished .up as good as new. He was just m time for their daily bath m an antiseptic solution against gangrene. They are pushed forward on an inclined plane and suddenly find themselves plunged up to the neck'in the sanitary bath. Some length of the building. There is a little it as kindly as if they knew what it would do for them. The men who handle them naturally wear impermeable boots up to their hips and higher. Fifteen thousand horses have thus been saved and gone back to the front.