It is impossible here even to give an estimate of the value of the surplus materials left on the hands of the War Department after the termination of the war industry, for the reason that the War Department itself has never been able to arrive at an estimate. The subject has been so vast, so intricate, and so complicated by the changing of _personnel_ and the evolution of organization, that it has seemed to be a hopeless task to attempt an inventory of the surplus property sold and for sale. We can, however, gain some idea of the quantities of it. It is estimated that the armistice found the Army with a surplus of war supplies on hand of a value of $2,000,000,000. This investment represented goods actually produced by American industry up to November 11, 1918, in the maintenance of a force of 4,000,000 men and in anticipation of a force of nearly 5,000,000 in 1919. But this, mind you, was surplus within the United States. On the same date--the day of the armistice--the A. E. F., through importations from the United States and through its own foreign purchases, had built up a surplus of supplies worth $1,330,000,000 over and above what it would return to the war reserves at home and outside of what it would consume while resting on European soil during demobilization. Thus we have the figure $3,330,000,000 as representing the value of the surplus supplies, munitions, on hand when the active fighting ceased. But this is only the beginning of the complete inventory; this was merely the surplus existing on November 11, 1918. War industry, under the policy of terminating it by graduating a declining production, still had weeks and months to go on producing goods, for most of which there was no war use. This dwindling manufacture by thousands of factories with millions of employees added to the surpluses materials worth many hundreds of millions. And still the tale is not told. War industry had been fostered by huge federal investments in buildings and machinery. These facilities, too, existed as surplus when the industry ended. This great accumulation was largely augmented by the machinery and other manufacturing facilities taken over by the Government in the settlement with the war contractors. The Government had purchased heavily of raw materials of various sorts, quantities of which remained as surplus after the armistice. In liquidating the war industry it added further to its stores of raw materials and took over, besides, a great mass of semi-finished materials in all stages of completion. When upon this heap we pile a great part of all the war building construction, and on that the additional surpluses automatically created when polity in Congress and in the executive offices made cut after cut in the size of the permanent Army, then we are approximating the total of the surplus.