Upon both liquidating agencies bore the need for haste in terminating the business. Armies were demobilizing, _personnel_ familiar with the subjects in negotiation melting away. If the discussions were to be long protracted they would take on the aspect of contentions, with evidence and affidavits to be secured, inventories and audits taken, hearings conducted, examination and cross-examination of witnesses, causes perhaps finally going into international tribunals or before commissions of arbitration. Nothing but ill feeling could result from such an outcome. The international business relations had become enormously intricate during the war. It was obviously an impractical thing to go into details, as a creditor might attack the schedules of a bankrupt corporation. Such procedure would drag along for years. It was to the advantage of every party to the transactions, the parties being sovereign nations having regard for their international contacts, to give and take in rough bargaining, accepting estimates and lump sums rather than insisting upon items and particulars, and finally to agree to totals which at the best would be only approximations. The important thing was to get the business over with justice done to all. That was the spirit in which both boards worked. Mr. Cuthell, upon his appointment, found in the Division of Purchase, Storage, and Traffic a consolidated and condensed record of every claim held by the War Department against the governments associated with us in the war. This showed him the field. He discovered, however, that none of the war missions maintained by the Allies in the United States was vested with power to adjust and settle these claims, many of which were disputed. Therefore, while his hastily gathered force of experts was preparing the claims for presentation, Mr. Cuthell himself (in April, 1919) was sent to Europe to ask the foreign governments concerned to create liquidating agencies competent to deal with the United States and, further, to retain in their respective services, until the liquidation should be effected, the officers familiar with the American transactions. It should be noted here that this was a wide departure from international precedent. Ordinarily, financial claims between nations are settled by the slow and cumbersome processes of diplomatic interchange, or else by arbitration. To have allowed the war claims to go into this channel would possibly have meant the end of the amity between the Allies and the United States. Our liquidation agencies proposed direct dealing through business plenipotentiaries, with restrictions even less exacting than would be drawn by two private corporations.