[136] _Le Journal_, December 2, 1915. They were photographed and the photograph reproduced in that paper.
[137] That was published in December 1915.
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 are now going to be repaired." "There are therefore 2000 engines scandalously abandoned," comments the _Journal_, ... "forgotten during sixteen months, and having passed from the state of being inutilized to that of being inutilizable. For if these machines, which were in service before the war and came from Belgium, are to-day, like the waggons of Blanc-Mesnil, incapable of being utilized in their present state, as the official note puts it, the reason is that they were left to decay in the rain and the wind without cover or case for five hundred days."[139]
Interesting in a smaller way is the reply given by the French War Minister to a question by a deputy, the Marquis de Ludre, who asked for information about a consignment of knives which had been provided for the army, but were found to be quite useless. The Minister explained that the Generalissimus having requested the immediate dispatch of 165,000 knives, the department charged with the execution of the order had no time to examine the goods, and the circumstance was overlooked that all kinds of knives were supplied, without any reference to the purpose for which they were destined.[140] The Minister added that no one should be blamed for this, inasmuch as it was "the result of exaggerated but praiseworthy zeal." This construction is charitable and may be true in fact. But the soldiers who, in lieu of a serviceable blade, found themselves in possession of a dessert knife may have taken a different view of the transaction.