The astonishing thing was the swiftness with which this great program was carried through. Within a year after the last gun was fired America had returned to the normal. The whole A. E. F. had been brought back in American vessels in ten months. In that time practically the entire Army had been paid off, disbanded, and transported to its homes. War businesses were braked to a standstill in an average time of three months, without a single industrial disturbance of any consequence. At the end of the year the greater part of the manufacturers’ claims had been satisfied with compromises fair both to the contractors and to the Government. The savings in contract terminations and adjustments had run into billions of dollars. A blanket settlement had been made with the Allies, thus virtually closing up our business in Europe. A permanent military policy had been written into law. The storage buildings and spaces were filled with reserve materials inventoried, catalogued, and protected against deterioration. Packed away compactly were the tools and machinery of an embryonic war industry ready to be expanded at will in the event of another war. Materials, largely of special war value and therefore normally to be regarded as scrap and junk, had been sold to the tune of billions, the exercise of ingenuity in the sales department producing a recovery that was remarkably large, averaging 64 per cent of the war cost. Such was our war demobilization. No other single business enterprise in all human history compared with it in magnitude; yet, in the midst of the peace negotiations and amid the economic crises fretting the earth, it attracted scant notice. To-day, only the continuing sale of surplus war materials and the adjudication of the last and most difficult of the industrial claims give evidence of the enterprise which engaged the efforts of the whole nation so short a time ago. CHAPTER II THE A. E. F. EMBARKS The American Expeditionary Forces, on November 11, 1918, were ill prepared to conduct the manifold activities leading to their demobilization. Up to that day the expedition had been too busy going ahead to think much about how it was to get home. But now had come the armistice, the end. The great adventure was over. The _guerre_ was _fini_.