The foreign liquidation, as we have seen, recovered into the Treasury approximately $757,000,000. On April 17, 1920, the sales of military property in the United States had brought in the sum of $641,261,000. Transfers of army property for use by other departments of the Government--a proper credit--involved materials valued at $42,096,000. On the date selected there still remained in the United States surplus, but unsold, army property valued at $600,000,000. The average recovery from the sale of surplus within the United States was about 75 per cent of the cost. Assuming that this ratio would hold throughout the entire liquidation, we can anticipate a cash recovery of $450,000,000 from the surplus still existing on April 17, 1920.[16] These reimbursements, however, even in the aggregate, constitute a minor credit when compared with the value of the equipment left by the war enterprise to be the inheritance of the permanent establishment and to be insurance of the continued safety of the United States in a world not yet willing to lay down its arms. The property of the War Department at the beginning of the war with Germany was estimated to be worth $500,000,000. At the end of the demobilization the property of the War Department was worth, at a rough estimate, $6,000,000,000. It is evident, therefore, that this increment in value--$5,500,000,000--represents present useful property, and that it must be subtracted from the expenditures in order to arrive at the net cost of the war itself. This valuation of property on hand, incidentally, does not include the value of real estate and buildings acquired during the war and retained in use afterwards, since it has never been fully determined as yet which of these installations will be kept. The deductions, then, on account of sales and on account of property retained, amount to $7,390,000,000, and this is the gross credit on the war page of the army ledger. To find the net cost of the war proper, we must subtract this from the gross expenditures, and we must do this roughly; because with transactions so large, indefinite, and complicated, it becomes absurd to reduce the figures to cents or even to thousands of dollars. The rough subtraction gives us the figure $8,885,000,000, which is not many millions away from the actual net cost. This, of course, represents cost to the War Department alone. It does not include the Navy’s costs, nor those of the United States Shipping Board, nor of the United States Railroad Administration, nor any costs of other great and expensive war enterprises which properly must be added in to give the full score of the cost of the war to the United States.