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. At Leysin the French had secured an unfinished hotel, and as there were no windows the men had the advantage of working almost in the open air. Excellent work was done in small cabinet work and French polishing. A modeller with four or five assistants made models of the Kaiser and Crown Prince in plaster, which were painted by a specialist. The demand was so great I could not purchase one. Another man with four or five assistants was making paper-knives from wire nails about 20 c.m. long and 1 c.m. in diameter. This industry was learned, I understand, from Russian prisoners in Germany. At Meiringen the French had a workshop for light leather work and another for rope slippers.