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: