With the immense fleet thus assembled the War Department transported men across the Atlantic with an intense concentration of effort never before known. First in the determination that the Germans should not conquer, later in the assurance that we ourselves should win, the Department shipped the troops over with scarcely a thought of how they were going to get back again. Future events were to be allowed to take care of themselves. Now such events had come to pass. England, faced with the sudden necessity of returning her own colonial soldiers to their native lands, and looking ahead, too, to the restoration of her all-important foreign commerce, immediately withdrew her tonnage from our service. France and Italy did likewise. The magnificent “bridge of ships” on which the American Expedition had crossed the Atlantic melted away, and 2,000,000 Americans found themselves partially marooned in a strange land. [Illustration: _Photo by Signal Corps_ CASUALS ON TRANSPORT LEAVING BREST] [Illustration: _Photo by Signal Corps_ BOARDING TRANSPORT FROM LIGHTERS, BREST] Yet not completely marooned. The fleet of American-flag troopships assembled during the war had on the day of the armistice a one-trip capacity of 112,000 military passengers. Operated in armed and guarded convoys, this shipping could not quite average one round-trip transatlantic voyage a month; its transporting capacity under war conditions was somewhere in the neighborhood of 100,000 troops a month. The armistice did away with the need of steaming in convoy and allowed the transports to be operated by the much more efficient system of individual sailings. Under such conditions the monthly capacity of the American-flag fleet was about 150,000 men. This capacity was to be discounted somewhat by the fact that practically all of the vessels had reached a point of having to be retired for a season of reconditioning and repair. It was evident that, unless this fleet were aided, it would take it, under the most favorable conditions, over a year to bring home the A. E. F.; and it was likelier that, actually, the spring of 1920 would be at hand before the last of the overseas soldiers set foot once more on their native soil. General Hines’s plan provided for such aid. It discounted in advance the subsequent fact that the Allies withdrew their passenger ships, and turned to our own resources for increased transport capacity.