The vessels alone could not write such records except through the coöperation of the port organizations on both sides of the Atlantic. Before the armistice the capacities of the ports, especially of those in France, were a sharper limitation upon the expansion of American power at the front than was the shortage in ocean shipping. After the armistice the improvement in shipping efficiency was attained largely by speeding up the loading and unloading of transports in port. On May 17 the transport _Maui_ at Brest took aboard 3,612 troops and sailed for America in three hours and thirty-five minutes after arriving. These soldiers had to be carried out to her in lighters, and they boarded her at the rate of sixty-five a minute. On the same day the transport _Cape May_, one of the converted cargo vessels, arrived at Bordeaux and sailed on the same tide with a load of 1,928 troops, having been dispatched in one hour and nineteen minutes. These were extreme instances, but they were indicative of the efficiency of the port machinery. At first the Transportation Service would fix no schedule for the return of the expedition, except the general one that it hoped to bring back the last man before January 1, 1920. By the beginning of spring, 1919, the situation looked so much better that the Service brought out a schedule showing the probable troop-carrying capacity available in the French ports by months, and estimating this capacity for several months ahead. The schedule promised a gradual increase until the shipping reached a goal of 250,000 embarkations a month. On the basis of this schedule the command of the A. E. F. fixed priorities for embarkation and published both the schedule and priority dates, to the excitement of the men of the expedition, most of whom were then still in France. To be sure, the authorities promised nothing definitely and informed the soldiers that the schedule would be met “if practicable”; yet the men of the A. E. F. banked on the Transportation Service to fulfill its predictions. The goal of 250,000 embarkations a month was the extreme maximum which the Service thought it might attain if everything went right. Yet three months later, when embarkations approached 400,000, the goal had been passed by 50 per cent. The actual performance brought 300,000 overseas soldiers home two months ahead of schedule, and 300,000 others beat the schedule by one month. Here was the equivalent of 900,000 men returned and discharged from service one month earlier than the nation had any reason to expect. The cost of maintaining such a force in arms for one month is approximately $66,000,000, a saving which must be set down to the credit of the administration that made it possible.