On
the other hand, from the beginning of the war down to November 1915,
729 waggons were lying immobilized at the station of Blanc-Mesnil.
Seven hundred and twenty-nine![136] Merchants, manufacturers,
importers, all were being literally beggared for lack of transports
while hundreds of waggons lay rotting at obscure little stations for
over a year. "The whole region of the West is encumbered," we read,
"with 30,000,000 hectolitres of apples, valued at 300,000,000 francs,
which cannot be conveyed anywhither, and which people are beginning to
bury in the earth as manure. Sugar is scarce and is rising in price,
whereas ever since last August[137] a single firm has unloaded 10,000
tons of sugar at Havre which it cannot have transported to Paris.
Innumerable army purveyors are unable to send the machines for the
shells...." An official order to the army prescribed a substitute for
barbed wire, which was not to be had at any price, yet at a single
station at least 135 tons of barbed wire were lying for a twelvemonth
unused, untouched.[138] On November 27, 1915, the military hospital
N16 at Poitiers needed coal. A request was made by telephone. The
reply received was: "We have coal at La Rochelle, but there are no
waggons to carry it." Yet there were forty-two waggons immobilized at
Cognac, 729 at Blanc-Mesnil and 121 standing laden with barbed wire
and other materials for over a year!

[136] _Le Journal_, December 2, 1915. They were photographed
and the photograph reproduced in that paper.

[137] That was published in December 1915.

[138] _Le Journal_, December 2, 1915.

Organization and intelligence!

With engines the experience was the same. The French Government,
anxious to make up for the deficiency, purchased 140 engines of
British make to be delivered some time in 1916. Yet at that time there
were at the station of Mezidon (Calvados) over 500 engines
immobilized, nobody knew why or by whom. This cemetery of locomotives
was photographed by the _Journal_. Such was the harvest reaped by the
enterprising Senator Humbert's commission at that one station. There
were others. At Marles six Belgian engines, at Serquigny twenty, etc.

The attention of the French authorities having been called to this
unqualifiable neglect, a senatorial railway commission was appointed
to inquire into the matter, and it reported that: "The engines in
question, numbering about 2000, of which 1000 on the State railway
system