On July 1, 1920, the War Department Claims Board, which had conducted the liquidation of the Department’s war business (with the small exceptions noted above) ended its work and disbanded, turning over to the regular military organization of the War Department the residue and remnant of work still left. Of the 27,000 war contracts, 26,000 had been terminated and settled by the Department. There were still 995 claims pending, or less than 4 per cent of the original number; but more than half the auditing and other preliminary work on these 995 claims was done. The liquidation was therefore more than 98 per cent complete, and this in little more than a year and a half after the Government halted the mightiest industrial undertaking upon which any people ever embarked. The promptness and wisdom shown in that settlement had allowed war industry to taper off and stop without shock to the economic structure of the country, had stabilized business, relieved the banks of the country of a vast load of debt which they were carrying for the war producers, and thus had brought the nation safely and easily through what might otherwise have been the sharpest business crisis it had ever known. Concretely, in dollars and cents, this work was of great material benefit to the Government and people of the United States. The rate of liquidation of the unfinished portions of the war contracts averaged fourteen cents to the dollar--that is, the payment of fourteen cents by the Government satisfied and wiped out a contractual obligation of one dollar. At this ratio, the settlements effected by the War Department Claims Board saved the people of this country from having to pay out well over $3,300,000,000. [Illustration: _Photo by Harris & Ewing_ THE WAR DEPARTMENT CLAIMS BOARD] [Illustration: _Photo by Signal Corps_ CONVALESCENT READING _STARS AND STRIPES_] [Illustration: _Photo by Signal Corps_ HOSPITAL TRAIN IN UNITED STATES] CHAPTER X ORDNANCE DEMOBILIZATION When the average man speaks of munitions, he means ordnance and, even more specifically, guns and ammunition. In this he is nearly half right. Technically, the word “munitions” includes army supplies of all sorts, even to candy and cigarettes, and in this sense the word is used in these volumes; but of the total war business transacted for the Army, the procurement of ordnance supplies constituted 42 per cent. Ordnance was by far the largest class of munitions. Four thousand American manufacturing plants worked on ordnance contracts during the war. Nearly 3,000,000 men labored in these mills.