Although in size and intricacy this problem was appalling, there was no hesitation in setting about solving it, no period when the enterprise hung in neutral, going neither forward nor backward. Ordnance work was reaching new peaks of production when the Ordnance Department in Washington took the first steps toward its dismemberment. In late October, 1918, when the Argonne-Meuse offensive was striking home and it was becoming evident that the curtain might at any time fall in the theatre of war, the chief ordnance officers held a secret meeting one Sunday afternoon in Washington and for the first time considered the possible demobilization. At this meeting the Chief of Ordnance appointed a commission to make a rapid study of the organization of the Ordnance Department to determine whether that organization was fitted to turn without change to the stoppage of work and the restoration of the industry to its former basis. This same commission later became the Ordnance Claims Board, the agency which supervised the entire demobilization of ordnance industry. It was, of course, like all the other bureau claims boards, subsidiary to the War Department Claims Board. The Ordnance Claims Board was formally created by order on November 2, and thus had been in existence for nine days when the armistice was signed. Its chief was Brigadier General W. S. Peirce. Its members were Colonel R. P. Lamont, who was president of the American Steel Foundries Corporation before and after his military service in the World War; Colonel G. H. Stewart, an ordnance officer of the Regular Army; Lieutenant Colonel M. F. Briggs, counselor at law, New York; Lieutenant Colonel F. R. Ayer, recorder of the Eastern Manufacturing Company, of Bangor, Maine; and Mr. Waldo H. Marshall, president of the American Locomotive Company, New York.