God nowadays is on the side of the army with the best business organization, as even Napoleon himself might admit if he were to look over the cash balances of the late war. By that token the Quartermaster Service was the chief factor in the victory, because that organization became approximately the business office of the Army. For purely the creature comforts--food, clothing, and shelter--the Army spent far more money than it did for its weapons and ammunition; but the activities of the army quartermasters embraced a much wider range of supplies than these. Theorize as you will about the evolution of the Army’s purchasing offices during the war until they were brought together into a single centralized purchasing agency, the fact remains that the ultimate purchasing agency was essentially the Quartermaster Service, magnified and expanded in power. General George W. Goethals was Quartermaster General when the General Staff Division of Purchase, Storage, and Traffic (which unified all army buying and brought order into the supply situation) was built around his personality and ability, and thereafter his chief assistant bore the title of “Quartermaster General, Director of Purchase and Storage.” The new Division retained all the duties of buying quartermaster supplies and assumed also the duty of buying all other supplies except the strictly technical ones. And even these were purchased by the older supply bureaus under the complete supervision of the Division of Purchase, Storage, and Traffic. When we approach the subject of the demobilization of the war industry which produced quartermaster supplies, we confront what was, measured in tons and in dollars and cents, the greatest business undertaking of the war. These pages have been filled by the story of the spectacular contest of American industrial genius with the inanimate resources which it fabricated into airplanes, artillery, and ammunition; but what filled the freight trains and the holds of the transatlantic cargo transports and the fleets of roaring trucks on the roads of France was not arms and the machinery of destruction to the degree that it was eatables and wearables, tentage, stoves and ranges, pots and pans--quartermaster supplies. There was the main weight and bulk; into them went the most money.