The French workers formerly had been lacemakers, and a few of them fishermen girls. Of the former there were a few who were the children or grandchildren of English people from the great English lace centers at Nottingham, who had settled in France many years before and been absorbed into the life of the French people.
In the salvage centers at an ordnance base I saw them working in the biggest boot repair shop in the world, where 30,000 pairs of boots are repaired a week; and here I saw old-fashioned boots cut into disks, which in their turn were made into boot laces. These salvaged boots, swept up from the debris at the front, emerge finally in three classes: 1, those that can be used again by men at the front, and are often preferred to new, as they are softer in wear; 2, those for men on the lines of communication; and, 2, for prisoners and colored laborers.
Only 30 Per Cent Salvaged.
While I was going round these repairing shops I noticed an American Officer being taken round also, and heard his cicerone giving him information on the importance of salvage—all of which he was carefully noting. 