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. CHAPTER XV QUARTERMASTER SUPPLIES The quartermaster does not loom large against the heroic background of war. The Army’s victualer and clothier collects few _croix de guerre_, and his interest in the Congressional Medal of Honor is impersonal. So long as his work is going well, you hear little about him; but let him once supply some tainted beef to the troops in the field or fail to deliver on time the Army’s winter underwear, and then the country takes notice of the quartermaster.