In order to provide the American money for this exchange it was necessary for the Treasury to ship to France great quantities of currency. It took the A. E. F. some time to convince the Treasury Department of the necessity for such shipments. The day after the armistice began, the command of the A. E. F. cabled to the Treasury requesting the immediate shipment of $500,000 in currency, an order afterwards increased to $2,000,000. This money did not actually reach the A. E. F. until the last day of January, 1919. By that date the expedition was beginning to embark rapidly. There was not enough American currency in Europe to buy all the French money of the expeditionary troops, and only by the most strenuous efforts could the Quartermaster Corps provide money for exchange until the first shipment of currency arrived from the United States. Finance officers were stationed in Paris, London, and at the principal seaports with orders to buy all the American money they could secure. By combing the banks and the countingrooms of brokers and by maintaining in Paris a fund from which shipments were rushed by motor convoys to the ports as these exhausted their supplies of currency, the Corps managed to keep the exchange system running. After the January shipment of $2,000,000 the Treasury Department arranged for an automatic supply of $10,000,000 every month. Meanwhile, at the ports the Corps had built up the exchange plan. Booths were set up on all docks, and a force of disbursing quartermasters was organized to go on board all transports and exchange the money of soldiers who had failed to make the exchange on shore. The A. E. F. passed an order making it compulsory for all soldiers to exchange their cash before sailing. Notices to this effect were posted conspicuously in all the embarkation camps. In the larger units the officers attended to the matter, collecting the French money from their men, receiving American money for it from the exchange officers, and then distributing the familiar currency among the troops. Individuals and men traveling in small units attended to their own exchange. The quartermasters at Brest distributed as much as $400,000 in American currency in a single day. Up to July 1 Brest had paid out $60,000,000 in American money to troops boarding ship there.