What did the war cost America? It may be that an accurate answer to that question will never be given. Certainly it cannot be given now, when the stocks of surplus materials are still being sold and the final settlements of the more difficult claims are still being made. Still, we can arrive at a fair approximation of what the war cost the War Department alone. In doing so we must deal with billions of dollars in our columns, and therefore errors and differences of a few millions, or even of a few hundred millions, have no important effect upon the totals. Even if all costs and credits could be figured out to the penny, the result would not be much unlike the estimates which follow. As a starting point we can take the appropriations for the Army made by Congress, since all the war costs of the War Department must be included within those appropriations. And we find that for the Army Congress appropriated in all, for every war purpose, the sum of $24,373,274,223.67. But not all these appropriations were expended. Some were made late in the war, and none of the money authorized by these acts to be spent was even obligated before the armistice terminated all proposed new projects. Congress hastened to repeal the untouched appropriations, and the various repeal acts canceled authorizations to the amount of $7,703,448,569.36. Therefore, the net amount made available to the War Department by the war appropriations was $16,669,825,654.31. This figure still does not represent the gross war cost of maintaining the War Department, but it is close to it. Since final expenditures and reimbursements have not yet been determined, but are still growing, as claims are paid and surplus property is sold, it is necessary that we accept a date somewhere and examine the ledger on that day, and from this examination we may be able to estimate closely the final figures. The date chosen here is April 17, 1920,--a day far enough this side of the armistice to bring the figures fairly close to their ultimate and conclusive form. By that day the Army was almost completely demobilized, the liquidation of the Army’s foreign affairs was virtually complete, the demobilization of the domestic war industry was approaching the end, and the greater part of the surplus war supplies had been sold. On April 17, 1920, then, we find that the actual expenditures of the War Department had reached the total of $16,276,288,337.19. This was within $400,000,000 of the net war appropriations, the difference, of course, being in the Treasury as unexpended balances available to those paying the final war bills of the War Department. Yet this expenditure cannot be labeled the cash cost of the war to the Army. We must first make several large deductions for money derived from sales of materials and, especially, for the property on hand set aside for the permanent Army and for the military readiness of the United States.