Although as these words are written it is more than two and a half years since the armistice of November 11, 1918, was signed, it is still impossible to give a clean-cut and definitive statement of the accomplishments of the industrial demobilization. It may never be possible to do so. Although in the main it was possible to terminate the war contracts with supplementary agreements fixing the Government’s liability to the penny, the consolidation of these agreements would not give the full cost of the termination. A few claimants are stubborn and insist upon the ultimate legal redress guaranteed them by the terms of their contracts. The administration in Washington has changed, and some few of the claims once settled--as it was believed, finally--are being reopened. And then, on the credit side of the war ledger there is the same indefiniteness. Surpluses of war supplies are indeterminate--expanding or contracting as policies change, as the military establishment finds need of materials once declared surplus, as war reserves deteriorate. Thus it is impossible to draw a line and say that all transactions on the one side should be entered in the war account and all on the other in the account of the permanent Army. But in one important branch of our war industry there was a complete, definite liquidation. The red line was drawn and the balance struck. This was the branch in which the Allies and other foreign nations were participants, as either buyers or sellers. The promptness with which this transaction was consummated, and the completeness of it--down to the last dollar due, down to the last pound of materials exchanged--mark it as one of the outstanding accomplishments in the whole industrial record of the war. Its benefits to the countries affected are not to be read entirely in the footings of the columns of debits and offsets: rather, they are political and economic--the prestige of the United States enhanced, international good will sustained, irritation and ill feeling, which might easily have been aroused among the late Allies and their associates in the settlement of their business arrangements, avoided. It is evident that these war transactions fell into two classes: one class in which the Allies dealt (through the American Government) with American industry for the production of supplies; the other in which the United States was the customer, and the industries of the Allies (and to a slight extent the industries of certain neutral nations) the source of supply. And, as the business of terminating the arrangements was thus a double-barreled proposition, the War Department found it convenient to attack it with two agencies: the so-called Cuthell Board (which, officially speaking, was the “Special Representative of the Secretary of War” and his assistants) and the United States Liquidation Commission.