The war business of the Director of Purchase was represented by nearly 16,000 contracts. The total face value of these contracts came to nearly $8,000,000,000. They represented all food procured by the Army during the war and afterwards, all forage for the Army’s animals, all clothing, all textile supplies of every sort, all shoes, harness, and other leather goods, all animals purchased, all motor vehicles, all wagons of every sort, all carts hand-drawn, engineering supplies of many kinds, all coal, oil, gasoline, paints, hospital equipment, medical and surgical supplies, hardware of all sorts, tools, tentage and other camp equipment, rope, office supplies, and many less conspicuous things. Several of these classes, it will be noted, consisted of munitions formerly procured by the separate technical supply bureaus, but the mass of them were the traditional quartermaster supplies. To get a comprehensive and clear-cut picture of the demobilization of this branch of war industry, let us start in France and follow back the home-bound expedition after it had closed up its business abroad. In the first place, the A. E. F. became a heavy purchaser of quartermaster supplies abroad. The purchasing office of the expedition became a great business organization. It bought supplies in almost every accessible country of Europe, and its agents even went to Africa and made purchases in Algeria and Morocco. These supplies were bought, not because America could not furnish them, but for the familiar sake of saving the use of the precious ocean tonnage. And a great deal of tonnage was saved by these foreign purchases. The Quartermaster Corps with the A. E. F. purchased 400,000 tons of miscellaneous supplies, but chiefly food and clothing, at the cost of $150,000,000. In addition, many horses were procured in Europe. The greatest tonnage saving of all, however, was brought about by the arrangement which permitted the A. E. F. to purchase coal at the Welsh mines. The cross-Channel fleet freighted more than 1,000,000 tons of coal from England. This not only relieved the transatlantic fleet of the necessity of lifting that amount of cargo, but it also permitted the employment in the Channel of vessels not well adapted to the transoceanic convoying. It is a moderate estimate that the American quartermaster purchases abroad saved the transatlantic shipment of 1,500,000 tons of cargo, a lading that would fill 300 large ships.