In due course factories for German Interned were installed for:—
- (a) Carpentry and woodwork, at Saint-Gall.
- (b) Leather goods and orthopædic apparatus, at Stansstad.
- (c) Toys, at Vitznau.
- (d) Metal work, at Rorschach.
Other developments followed.
Some of the French workshops were financed and directed as matters of national concern, the French Red Cross taking a leading part in the matter; others were set up by French industrials as a business speculation, machinery and tools being imported from France. The manufacture of furniture and huts received special encouragement from the French Government, as these articles were required in large quantities for the restoration of the provinces occupied by the enemy in Northern France. Clogs and metal work also found a ready outlet, facilities for import into France being accorded by the French Government. The men employed in the factories were, as a rule, those who had been employed in similar work in France and Belgium in pre-war days.
I am indebted to Dr. Garnett, my technical adviser, for some details of the work done by the French, from which I extract the following:—
It has to be borne in mind that the British Army of August, 1914, consisted almost exclusively of professional soldiers, while the French Army consisted largely of tradesmen.
Wherever the French were located, nearly every available workshop, especially if provided with electric power, was secured by them, and turned to more or less profitable purposes. The most remarkable example was at Spiez, where the workshops used by the contractor for the electrification of the Lotschberg Railway had been equipped by a French firm. Fifty men were employed in two relays, working eight hours each, and they turned out 2,000 pairs of sabots daily, using about three tons of sawn birch timber every day. The sabots were sent at once to France. The men were paid 50 centimes an hour (about frs. 24 a week). I could not avoid the conclusion that the French employer was to some extent exploiting prisoners' labour. At the same time, it was much better that the men should be employed than that they should be idle.
At Champéry the French had leased a sawmill and a joiner's shop with machine tools, and were making huts for re-housing the people in the devastated regions of northeast France. This work was under the auspices of the French Red Cross. The huts were built in panels 1¼ metres square, and put together by bolts and nuts. For railway transport they packed solid. Associated with the hut building was the furniture manufacture, carried on in several of the French centres. The furniture was made in birch and pine, and, like the huts, packed solid. Another remarkable industry was the framing in birch wood of school slates for the French schools. The slates were quarried between Frutigen and Adelboden; they were cut to size at the quarries and finished at Adelboden.
At Adelboden the Belgians had a weaving shed, with hand looms capable of turning out linen 2 metres in width.
At Vevey a French Colonial officer, had established the "T.I.M." This appeared to be a purely commercial undertaking where unskilled labour made saleable goods, which comprised bags, wire rat-traps, wire for champagne corks, kitchen utensils, etc. In connection with the majority of this work it was hard to believe that the training would be of value to the men when they returned to France.