Demobilization

The demobilization problem of the Corps of Engineers was a two-branched one in that, while the Engineers had purchased heavily of supplies in the United States, they had used those supplies principally in France, where also they had placed contracts for the delivery of large quantities of engineering materials which it was not expedient to ship to the A. E. F. from the United States. When the armistice came, it found great engineering production projects well advanced both in this country and abroad, large surpluses of materials on hand on both sides of the ocean, and in France an enormous activity in the construction of buildings and other more or less permanently installed facilities for the expedition. In France the Engineer Corps was charged with the duty of building docks, port terminal facilities, storage depots, hospitals, barracks, railroads, and other equipment for the Army, as well as that of building roads and bridges, tunneling out mines, and stringing wire for the troops at the front. It was the job of the Engineers after the armistice to terminate this whole vast business, closing out the contracts, settling with the contractors, disposing of surplus supplies, and storing reserves for possible use by a future army of large size.

At the time of the armistice the Engineers were engaged on more than 600 separate construction projects in France. The work on 246 of these was stopped immediately, and the only permitted post-armistice construction was that of facilities to be used during the demobilization of the A. E. F. These cancellations accounted for a saving of $135,000,000. The cancellations included projects for the construction of 450 miles of railroad. Contracts with French producers of engineering materials were canceled to the value of $30,000,000. In settling with the contractors the Engineers followed the principle that the American Government would compensate the foreign producers for all losses sustained by them, but would pay no anticipated profits. Eventually the French contractors’ claims were settled by the payment of less than $1,500,000. Purchase orders placed with French producers, calling for the delivery of materials worth about $13,000,000, were canceled and settled for less than $90,000, of which sum about $60,000 was paid for supplies accepted in the settlement.

The Engineers in France found considerable constructive work to do after the armistice. There were camps to be built at the American ports of embarkation in France, nearly 10,000 miles of roads to be repaired, and schools, theatres, and athletic fields, including the Pershing Stadium near Paris, to be constructed. These, and the installations put in before the armistice, constituted for the A. E. F. a physical equipment on which the American Government had spent hundreds of millions of dollars; yet after the return of the Expeditionary Forces, the physical installation in France, taken as a whole, was more of an embarrassment to the United States than an asset. Some of the railroads, docks, and other great pieces of construction work undoubtedly possessed great inherent future value to the French, and we could expect to be well paid for turning them over to the French Government; but as an offset there were scores of installations of no peace-time value at all—roads, military railroads, and vast camps of flimsy construction built upon fertile farm lands. The obligation was upon the A. E. F. to restore these occupied French lands to their original condition; but there were approximately 50,000 acres of French farms so occupied, and to have restored this land would have taken the time of 30,000 men for several years.

The great reserves of engineering supplies in France, as contrasted with permanent installations, were indeed an asset, but not so much of an asset as one would think. In the first place, to sell them to private buyers in the European markets would have been a work of several years, during which time the American Government would have had to maintain in France a force of perhaps 5,000 men. Moreover, all that time the engineering stores would have been constantly deteriorating, so that their average value would not have been nearly so great as their value at the time of the armistice.

These were the considerations which led to the decision to dispose of all American engineering facilities in France, both supplies and permanent or semi-permanent installations, in one blanket, lump-sum deal with the French Government. The installations went to the French at a price difficult to fix exactly, because in this same bargain was included all other A. E. F. property not returned to the United States and not sold to other foreign countries, the French paying the flat price of $400,000,000 for the whole lot. It is estimated that the American army installations in France accounted for $32,000,000 of the total sum paid. If we accept that figure, then we must call it a good bargain; for the French Government also assumed our obligations to the French property owners, thus relieving us of the work of restoring their farms to usable condition, ripping out the plumbing and other modern conveniences with which we had profaned some of their most ancient chateaux and monasteries, and doing a thousand similar tasks, or, in lieu of such work, paying to the owners the cost of the restoration in cash.

The few engineering supplies accumulated by the Americans in England were sold to individual buyers. Enemy engineering matériel captured in France by the A. E. F. went to France in the lump-sum sale. In Belgium the captured matériel consisted principally of lumber and sawmill equipment, worth about $250,000, and this went to Belgium to pay that country for assuming the liability for the German ammunition captured by our forces in Belgium.

It was the policy, because of the scarcity of shipping, to return no heavy engineering supplies to the United States, but to bring back such light technical equipment as searchlights, flash-ranging and sound-ranging devices, instruments, and the like. It was, however, expedient to return large quantities of steel rails and beams, because these could serve as ballast in ships; and the Government also ordered the return of a large quantity of road-building machinery for the use of the Bureau of Public Roads. The Engineers saw to it that samples of most of the engineering equipment used by other armies in the World War were shipped to the United States for study here.

The property bargain with France disposed of everything except two large claims against the United States: one for the American use of the French railroads, and the other for the damage wrought by the A. E. F.’s lumbering operations in the French forests. The railroad claim was most intricate and complicated because of the inaccuracy of the records and for other reasons, but it was finally settled in full by allowing the French Government a credit of about $61,000,000 (435,000,000 francs valued at seven to the dollar). The forestry claim was settled by allowing the French a credit of $10,000,000.

The claims of French contractors who had supplied us with engineering materials were settled, along with nearly all other French contractors’ claims, by the United States Liquidation Commission in a blanket negotiation with the French Government. One engineering claim, however, remained unsettled. The contractor had agreed to supply 6,000 demountable barracks to the A. E. F., but he had delivered no buildings by the beginning of the armistice and had made little progress in his contract. Nevertheless, he presented a claim for damages amounting to $600,000. The Liquidation Commission offered him $1,200, and he refused it. His itemized costs included purchases of liquors, ladies’ dressing tables, and oriental rugs, and he even admitted orally that one of his “costs” was a mysterious payment of $4,000 to a French interpreter in the office of the American engineer purchasing officer in France.

On the first day of the armistice there were nearly 200,000 tons of engineering war materials produced and on hand in the United States and awaiting shipment to France. This accumulation was worth $31,000,000. It included hundreds of locomotives, thousands of cars, and tens of thousands of tons of track materials, building materials, general machinery, and tools. Meanwhile the American contracts for the production of such supplies had reached a value of upwards of $365,000,000, and production had reached such rates as 300 locomotives and 1,800 railway cars a month. This business was terminated with the utmost rapidity which was consistent with the manufacturer’s need to convert his factory to other work without undue disturbance to his labor force, and with the Government’s need to acquire adequate military reserves of such supplies and to realize most on the money which it had invested in the enterprise.

When the war industry came to an end, the War Department thus found on its hands great quantities of engineering supplies. Some of these supplies, such as cranes and road-building supplies, were turned over to other departments of the Government for use in public works. Up to May 15, 1920, engineering equipment and supplies had been sold on the market with a gross cash return of over $110,000,000. Since the cost of these materials had been about $128,000,000, the sales return was about 85 per cent of the cost, an extraordinarily high recovery rate. Foreign governments were heavy purchasers, particularly of railroad locomotives and cars. The Engineers reserved from sale and stored in various interior depots an immense reserve of supplies for possible future military use. The principal items in this reserve are as follows:

The financial liquidation of the American war business of the Engineers was unusually satisfactory, both because of the celerity with which it was carried out and because of the low cost of its termination to the Government. Shortly before the armistice many of the most important purchasing activities of the Engineers were transferred to the Director of Purchase, Storage, and Traffic, except that the Chief of Engineers continued to buy railroad equipment and several other sorts of heavy materials and also searchlights and ranging apparatus. After the armistice the engineering contracts were consequently terminated and settled by two agencies—the Engineers themselves and the Division of Purchase, Storage, and Traffic. The Engineer Claims Board was created to liquidate the war engineering industry for the Corps of Engineers, acting, however, as subsidiary to the War Department Claims Board. By May 15, 1920, the Engineer Claims Board had settled up finally 168 of its total of 171 war claims. These claims accounted for a total war business amounting to $238,000,000. Production after the armistice resulted in the delivery of supplies worth $17,000,000, which the War Department paid for at the contract prices. The terminations equaled $218,500,000 in amount, and for this termination the Government had to pay in cancellation costs only a little more than $1,850,000, or less than 1 per cent of the original obligation.

The orders for engineering supplies taken over by the Director of Purchase, Storage, and Traffic amounted to $138,000,000. A considerable part of this production was allowed to go through to completion, and some of the business was transferred to other branches of the War Department for settlement. The Director of Purchase and Storage terminated entirely business amounting to $29,600,000 and paid in termination charges $2,800,000—about 9 per cent of the original obligation.

One engineer contractor, a builder of locomotives, whose contracts were $55,000,000 in amount, canceled the entire business without cost to the Government.

CHEMICAL WARFARE MATERIALS

The armistice and the order to begin demobilization played havoc for a time with the Chemical Warfare Service, for the first assumption was that the use of poisonous gases in warfare had originated and been developed in, and would end with, the World War. On November 29, 1918, the Director of the Chemical Warfare Service received an official notice that “the amount of such [chemical warfare] equipment for the needs of the Army after the passing of the present emergency will be zero.” The gas-mask production division of the Chemical Warfare Service was a highly organized and highly efficient body, and so rapidly did it work after the armistice that it succeeded in dismantling its gas-mask manufacturing plants and selling almost all the machinery before Congress blocked the plan and, with new legislation, made the Chemical Warfare Service a permanent branch of the regular military establishment. The gas production division of the Service, however, was not so precipitate, and it retained the facilities acquired during the war for the production of poison gases and chemicals.

The Gas Defense Division, which produced the gas masks and other defensive equipment, largely did its own manufacturing; but it contracted extensively for the materials used in the manufacture. On the day of the armistice its outstanding contracts amounted to $5,000,000. By the end of the year 1918, or less than eight weeks later, these contracts had been reduced by terminations to about $150,000. The sales of surplus materials brought in about $8,000,000. The termination of the production of gas masks at the two great plants on Long Island was guided entirely by the best interests of the thousands of employees, not one of whom was discharged until one of the official employment agencies had found a place for him in commercial life. In six months the demobilization of this branch of the Chemical Warfare Service was complete.

So far as the employees were concerned, the demobilization of the gas-making industry was not a difficult problem. All the plants were owned by the Government, and most of the operatives were enlisted men in uniform. Moreover, for nearly a month before the armistice there had been almost a complete suspension of the manufacture of war gas, due to a shortage of shell to be filled with gas.

The War Department’s equipment for making gas consisted of the Edgewood Arsenal and a number of subsidiary plants located in various parts of the country. The Edgewood Arsenal was retained, at first in stand-by condition, with all machinery cleaned and oiled, all outdoor equipment housed in safe storage, and all surfaces subject to deterioration painted. The subsidiary plants, buildings, and equipment, were sold, principally to manufacturers of chemicals and dyes. The sales were conducted by the auction method, and the Government received good prices.

Even some of the experts in the Chemical Warfare Service accepted the common, but, as it proved, erroneous, opinion after the armistice that the great quantities of war gases accumulated by this nation and others during the war would be a dangerous menace as long as they were in storage, and that they would have to be destroyed, presumably by being dumped into the sea. These poisons were supposed to be so corrosive in their action that no metal containers would hold them long. Since large quantities of the war gases on hand after the armistice were loaded into steel shell, it was assumed that these shell and their contents would be a dead loss, except, perhaps, for some slight salvage value.

Events after the armistice seemed to strengthen this impression. Leakage, for instance, was undoubtedly occurring in the gas shell stored in our shell dumps in France; and it was dangerous for unmasked men to work around some of these dumps. An even more convincing demonstration of the instability of loaded gas projectiles was given accidentally at Edgewood Arsenal after the armistice. Among the war stocks there declared surplus was one consignment of 500,000 hand grenades loaded with stannic chloride, a smoke-producing chemical. These had been returned from France, and they were undoubtedly in poor condition. On the voyage from France the chemical had begun to eat holes through the metal of the grenades, and several thousand of the grenades had had to be thrown overboard. The Chemical Warfare Service sold these grenades to a chemical company. When a locomotive backed down to couple to the cars containing the grenades, the slight jar exploded fully half the missiles, and nobody could go near that sidetrack for two or three days.

This incident apparently showed the impermanency of war gases. Actually it demonstrated the impermanency only of stannic chloride, which is highly corrosive to metal; and stannic chloride, in the quantities produced, was a relatively unimportant war chemical. Nevertheless, in the fear that other more highly toxic gases would also corrode and eat through their containers, the Chemical Warfare Service dumped into the ocean some twenty tons of phosgene and a large quantity of mustard-gas shell. This was probably sheer waste, as it proved, because subsequent experimentation established the fact that the most deadly of the war gases could be safely stored for years if all water moisture were driven from the chemicals themselves and all air exhausted from the containers, leaving only the pure chemicals in contact with the metal of the containers. Corrosion was found to be due to the presence of moisture within the containers.

Nearly 1,400 tons of phosgene, chlorpicrin, mustard, and other deadly gases made during the war are now stored at Edgewood; and to-day, nearly three years after the armistice, their containers are still in almost perfect condition. It is estimated that they will not deteriorate in storage for at least ten years, a fact indicating that poison gases are as durable in storage as smokeless powder. There are also stored at Edgewood large quantities of loaded gas shell manufactured during the war. These are frequently inspected and tested, and the tests show that they are keeping well. The experts now estimate that loaded gas shell will exist in good condition as long as a battleship can give service, from the time of commissioning the ship to the time when it is declared obsolete.

Other reserves of chemical warfare equipment now stored at Edgewood include 51,000 Livens projectors, 88 trench mortars, 3,000,000 unfilled gas shell, and 700,000 unfilled hand grenades. There are also in storage over 2,000,000 gas masks and 1,000 tons of activated charcoal for use as a gas absorbent in the mask canisters. The masks are stored in hermetically sealed boxes, a method of preservation which, it is hoped, will protect the rubberized fabric from deterioration for years to come. Other stored supplies include protective suits, protective ointment, and gas alarm devices.

Such chemicals as the Chemical Warfare Service did sell after the armistice brought good prices. The prices of many chemicals went up after the armistice, and the Chemical Warfare Service profited accordingly. The Service made a profit of 100 per cent on the phosgene it sold and also found a good market for its chlorine.

Among the reserves stored at Edgewood was a considerable quantity of the felt which was developed by Americans as a protection against arsenical smoke, a deadly chemical never given a trial in the field of battle, but regarded as an inevitable development in the expected campaign in 1919. The production of toxic smoke was one of the most interesting phases of the history of chemical warfare in the World War. The candles which projected this smoke were perhaps the most appalling weapon devised by any of the belligerents during the conflict, and the armistice interrupted an Anglo-American project, well under way, to asphyxiate the Germany Army with them in the spring of 1919. This development was one of the deepest military secrets both in England and the United States. Except for the French, not even the other Allies were admitted to the secret.

The smoke candles employed an arsenical compound known as diphenolchlorarsine. In the laboratory this was not a new substance—in fact, none of the war gases actually used in the field was a new development; and of projected poisons, so far as is known, only the deadly Lewisite, the invention of Captain W. Lee Lewis in the Chemical Warfare Service’s laboratory in Washington, was a new chemical creation evolved specifically for use in war.11 The other war gases had all been known to organic chemistry, some of them for many years. So with diphenolchlorarsine. It was first produced in Germany in the last century, and the Germans also originated its use as a military weapon.

The Germans produced and used diphenolchlorarsine as a solid. The substance was put into glass bottles, which, in turn, were inserted in the T. N. T. filler of shell. The explosion pulverized the chemical into a fog which had the advantage of being able to pass through the cotton baffles in the canister of an ordinary gas mask. This fog was highly irritating to the membrane of the nose and throat and caused sneezing, which prevented a soldier gassed with it from putting on his mask, so that he was left a victim to more lethal gases fired simultaneously.

The British secured “dud” shell containing diphenolchlorarsine and at once recognized this chemical as potentially much the most fatal substance yet brought out in chemical warfare. But it was evident that the German was not using it properly, in such a way as to release its full toxic effect. The question was how to atomize diphenolchlorarsine much more finely. British chemists and mechanical engineers eventually succeeded in producing the substance in candles which burned and cast out dense smoke. This smoke was diphenolchlorarsine so finely divided that the American gas mask, the most effective mask of all, was utterly powerless against it. The smoke particles passed freely through the baffles; and, since the particles were minute solids and not true gas at all, they were unaffected by the gas-absorbing charcoal and lime of the mask canister.

Every masked experimenter gassed by this smoke declared that a mask was worse than no protection at all. It is notable, too, that every one gassed, without knowing that he was merely reiterating what others before him had said, declared that, if he had not been able to escape quickly from the concentration, he would have shot himself rather than endure the agony longer. As to the persistence and diffusibility of the smoke, at one demonstration when two candles were burned in a desolate spot in England, civilians were slightly gassed in a village several miles away.

So much for the substance which outdid any of the horrors of the most horrible of all wars. But the weapon was useless unless protection against it could also be developed. America invented the protection—thick felt which was a textile triumph in that it absolutely caught and held the smoke particles, yet permitted fairly easy breathing through itself. The plan was to issue this felt in small pieces which the soldiers could wrap around their canisters, in order that all inhalation should be through the felt. The felt-wrapped canister would then be placed back in its knapsack. In the joint project, we were to produce the protective felt and the British the candles. The British had ordered several million of these and were actually producing them in large quantities at the time of the armistice. By that date the American mills were turning out the felt by thousands of yards, and our Chemical Warfare Service was also planning a factory in which to produce diphenolchlorarsine candles. All this activity was an intense secret in both countries. The program was being directed at a certain week in the spring of 1919, when, at a favorable hour, the troops on our side having quietly been protected against the smoke, it was proposed to fire the candles everywhere along the front. The gas warfare organizations of Great Britain and America confidently expected that when that lethal infusion had disappeared, the German Army would practically have ceased to exist, and the war would be over.

There is reason to believe that the German also realized the inefficiency of diphenolchlorarsine when fired in shell and had followed an independent line of development which led him to the production of candles. It is asserted that such candles were made in Germany before the armistice. It is doubtful, however, whether the German succeeded in developing a protection against the smoke.

After the armistice our Chemical Warfare Service continued an independent development of arsenical smoke. The problem was a mechanical one. The chemical is driven off as smoke by means of heat. If the heat is too great, the substance will burn and be changed into non-toxic compounds. If the heat is too mild, the smoke will not be thrown off efficiently. This problem we have solved.

Mention should be made also of that other chemical secret of the war, Lewisite. In one sense Lewisite can be termed a development of mustard gas, for the laboratory process of making mustard suggested to Captain Lewis certain analogous chemical reactions, out of one of which came the hitherto unknown liquid which was named after him. Like mustard, Lewisite is a so-called vesicant, a substance which blisters the skin, but it is much more powerful; for, whereas mustard gas merely burns, Lewisite is absorbed through the skin into the system. Three drops of this chemical placed on the belly of a rat will kill the animal in two or three hours, and it is believed that this would be the effect of a similar quantity sprinkled on the skin of a man. Like mustard, too, Lewisite gives off fumes slowly, and these fumes have a burning, deadly effect.

Before and since the armistice there have been other developments of war gases in this country, and for some of these, as well as for some of the better known gases, there is, or can be, civilian use. Believing that chemical warfare has come to stay as long as there shall be wars, the Chemical Warfare Service has sought since the armistice to develop peace-time uses for war gases in order that there may be a continuous production of them, with a simultaneous training of chemists on whom the Government can rely in time of war. A new tear gas which has been developed is called chloracetophenone. The presence of a minute quantity of this gas in the air has a blinding lachrymatory effect upon the eyes of one caught in it; yet the gas is non-toxic. Various metropolitan police forces are experimenting with this gas to determine its effect in dispersing mobs. Another distressing, but not dangerous, gas bears the staggering chemical name of diphenylaminechlorarsine. It is temporarily blinding and causes nausea and vomiting, but it is not regarded as a lethal gas. It is proposed to use this in protecting vaults in which valuables are stored. Phosgene is used in making brilliant dyes, and it can also be used to exterminate rats. Chlorine is a widely used disinfectant. With other war gases it is proposed to exterminate numerous sorts of weevil and other insect pests which annually cause great damage to American crops.12

SIGNAL SUPPLIES

Signal corps contracts on the day of the armistice were 1,244 in number. They contemplated a production of supplies worth upwards of $45,000,000. Telephones, telegraph equipment, radio, field glasses, photographic cameras, pigeons, wrist watches—these were the sorts of things the Signal Corps procured.

The termination of this industry was guided almost solely by industrial conditions. With most signaling supplies it was impracticable to build up large war reserves. There is perhaps no branch of modern mechanical development to which applied science pays more attention than it does to perfecting the means of communication. Progress is rapid, and therefore any large reserves of supplies set aside by the Signal Corps were likely to become obsolete and without value after a few years. Moreover, although the war industry of the Signal Corps scored its greatest production records with such common things as telephone and telegraph instruments and wire, all this equipment was of special design unknown in ordinary commercial use and therefore without value to it. Consequently there was not the usual good business reason to continue production under the well-advanced signal corps contracts—namely, that a greater cash recovery could be obtained from the sale of finished products than from the junk sale of semi-finished materials. Finally, many of the signal corps supplies—and this applies particularly to radio—were heavily protected by valid patents. These patents the Government made free with during the war, but the existence of the patents virtually precluded the Government from selling its excess radio equipment after the war. For these and other reasons the signal corps war business was terminated at precisely the rate at which the manufacturing equipment and its operatives could be diverted to other work.

Unlike the Ordnance Department and the Air Service, the Signal Corps was not organized before the armistice by manufacturing districts, but conducted all its business from the central office in Washington. The Washington headquarters, however, maintained intimate contact with the contractors through its so-called flying squadron, an organization of officers who visited the war factories, inspected their work, and coöperated with the producers in the solution of their shop problems. This same organization after the armistice conducted the field work of the industrial liquidation, acting under the direction of the Signal Corps Board of Contract Termination, which, in turn, was subsidiary to the War Department Claims Board.

The new and unused materials acquired before the industry could be terminated were disposed of in various ways. Adequate war reserves of supplies were placed in safe storage. During the war the Signal Corps had built up a large training school at Camp Alfred Vail in New Jersey. This camp has been retained as a permanent adjunct to the Signal Corps. To the warehouses of Camp Vail were sent large quantities of surplus signal corps supplies, both finished articles and partially manufactured apparatus, there to be studied and developed in the laboratories of the camp. The Post Office Department took a certain amount of radio telephone and telegraph apparatus for use on its mail planes. The Forest Service took radio and also some of the homing pigeons for use in its fire-protection service in the national forests. Other supplies were sold to the public.

The Signal Corps, as one of its duties, created and compiled a photographic history of America’s participation in the World War, both in motion pictures and in “still” views. The hundreds of thousands of negatives in this history were collected in Washington after the armistice and stored in a specially constructed building which is not only fireproof, but which provides air of uniform temperature and dryness, to prevent rapid deterioration of the negatives. A complete catalogue of views was prepared, and the sale of duplicates to the public was authorized. Many of the illustrations in these volumes are taken from that collection.

The disposal of surplus A. E. F. signaling equipment was notable in that it included a large sale to the French Government of equipment not embraced by the general bulk sale of 1919. When the armistice came the A. E. F. was provided with hundreds of miles of main-line telephone and telegraph cables, hooking up a complete net of branch lines, wires, and exchanges, all of it American-made and American-operated. The question was whether to rip it all out, after which it would be represented by some thousands of tons of junk, or to sell it intact as it was; and there was but one possible customer, the French Government, which monopolizes telegraph and telephone communication in France. Signal corps officers in France took up with the French Government, directly after the armistice, the question of the sale of these installations to France, and the negotiations were so well advanced in the spring of 1919, when the United States Liquidation Commission (which conducted the blanket sale) arrived, that the signal corps sale was specifically exempted from the bulk sale. France paid $6,400,000 for the installations. France and England jointly paid $130,000 for the American cross-Channel cable, laid with great difficulty (and at an approximate cost of $238,000) between Cackmere, England, and Cap d’Antifer, France.13 Negotiations were also under way for the purchase by the French Government of a large quantity of American wire-system construction material, but this was finally included in the supplies delivered under the terms of the bulk sale. Sales to other governments and to individuals were small.

MOTOR VEHICLES

All of the A. E. F.’s surplus motor vehicles (a classification including bicycles and trailers as well as trucks, automobiles, motorcycles, and sidecars), as this surplus existed in August, 1919, went to the French Government under the terms of the bulk sale. The sale value of these vehicles was estimated by our appraisers at $100,000,000, an estimate arrived at as follows: the original purchase cost had been $310,000,000. Wear and tear, however, had reduced the usable value to the Army to $220,000,000. A second-hand machine, however, must be sold at a second-hand price, which will not represent the value of the machine to the owner disposing of it. A fair second-hand sale value of this equipment (assuming that the vehicles would be sold to private purchasers) was estimated at $132,000,000. But sale in bulk to the French Government relieved the United States of the cost of disposing of the vehicles in various sized lots to private purchasers. It was estimated that the overhead expense of selling the vehicles to individuals would be approximately $32,000,000. As one item in this sales expense, it would require the services of 3,000 troops for one year to take care of the unsold vehicles. In that interval there would be a further depreciation in the value of the vehicles. Therefore, the A. E. F. was willing to throw off $32,000,000 and make to the French Government a flat price of $100,000,000 for the equipment.

Before this sale, however, there had been sales to others, both governments and speculators. The Poles and some of the new Slavic nations bought nearly 3,000 vehicles from the A. E. F. American motor vehicles in England (they were not many) were sold at auction. The Italian Government bought about 200 trucks, ambulances, and motorcycles. As our troops were demobilized from the Army of Occupation in Germany, they left a surplus of over 14,000 motor vehicles. These were sold to a British syndicate for $25,000,000. Over 1,200 trucks of German make, acquired by the A. E. F. under the armistice terms, were sold to a German dealer.

The war orders for motor vehicles (including bicycles and trailers) of all sorts from American factories called for the production of 434,000 of them. Of this number approximately 110,000 were bicycles and trailers, the rest being motor vehicles proper. The war industry had produced great numbers of these vehicles before the armistice, 118,000 having been shipped to the A. E. F., while thousands of others were either in use by the Army within the United States or were awaiting shipment overseas on the day of the armistice. By the fourth day of the armistice, termination requests had stopped the production of 178,000 vehicles under the war orders. The rest were allowed to go through to completion. Adding to the reserves on hand at the signing of the armistice the production after the armistice, we find that the results of the war industry were to provide the Army in this country with 138,000 motor vehicles, none of which had crossed the ocean.

The continuation of production after the armistice was allowed for numerous reasons. A motor truck is an article readily salable at a good price. Its fabricated parts, however, have little value other than that of scrap metal. Moreover, to permit the completion of contracts saved the Government from the payment of cancellation charges. For example, as a result of these business considerations one order for 8,000 Standard B trucks, under which order production had started about November 1, 1918, was allowed to go through to completion. The Standard B truck was an assemblage of standard parts. Many factories made the parts, and a few, under contract with the Government, assembled the parts and turned out the completed chassis. To have terminated the contracts would have left on the Government’s hands a mass of parts of doubtful sales value and an obligation to pay heavy cancellation charges besides. The completed trucks could be sold for nearly all, if not all, the money the Government had put into them. The same was true of some of the other standardized trucks.

Production was continued in some instances to place in the Army’s hands certain sorts of trucks of which the Army was short even after the great production ending with the armistice. Finally, many of the truck factories were working exclusively on government contracts, and to have ended this work forthwith would have thrown tens of thousands of men out of work. It is notable, however, that two of the largest contractors, the Ford Motor Company and the Dodge Motor Company, both of Detroit, agreed to accept termination of all work uncompleted on November 16, 1918, at no cost to the Government except the cost of uncompleted materials which they would be unable to use in their commercial enterprises.

The whole vast war business of building motor vehicles for the Army was terminated at a cost of $12,300,000 to the Government. As an offset to this cost, the Government took in materials worth $4,100,000, making the net cost of termination about $8,200,000.

MEDICAL SUPPLIES

The armistice turned what had been an insufficient quantity of medical supplies for the expanding, fighting American Army into an enormous surplus for the demobilizing Army and the future permanent military establishment. The total purchases by the Medical Corps had reached a value of nearly $250,000,000. Of these purchases, supplies to the value of about $11,000,000 had been procured in Europe, principally in France. The supplies on hand on the day of the armistice and delivered on contract afterwards were worth $110,000,000.

With the warehouses filled with hospital equipment, medicines, ambulances, and the other articles which the military surgeons used, the war industry producing these things was terminated expeditiously after the armistice. In the United States over 1,400 contracts and purchase orders, calling for the production of supplies worth $60,000,000, were terminated at a net cancellation cost of $3,000,000. Deliveries after the armistice from American factories gave to the Medical Corps supplies worth $32,000,000. In France and England the contract cancellations saved $3,500,000. These cancellations terminated, among other things, a project which would in time have delivered to the A. E. F. twenty-nine complete ambulance trains, each with sixteen coaches. Nineteen such trains had been delivered to the A. E. F. before the armistice.

In the general bulk sale of A. E. F. property to the French Government went American medical supplies worth $34,000,000. The Medical Corps turned over to the American Red Cross in France supplies worth $9,000,000 for use in the relief of the stricken populations of Europe. To other governments the A. E. F. sold medical supplies worth $6,000,000. The rest of the medical supplies in Europe were returned to the United States. In this country the surplus medical supplies were distributed in various ways—to the Public Health Service, into the army reserves, and (by sale) to the public.