In the United States, among the troops quartered at the cantonments, camps, posts, and stations of the war-time establishment and traveling over the American railroads, there was no such baggage problem as had fretted the A. E. F., but nevertheless there was one of considerable size. Shortly after the armistice the Transportation Service took cognizance of an accumulation of reports which it had received telling of baggage, ostensibly the property of soldiers, which was remaining unclaimed at railroad stations and at posts formerly occupied by troops. It happened that about that time the general baggage agents of the principal American trunk lines held a convention in Washington. The Transportation Service seized the opportunity of this meeting to request the coöperation of the railroads in returning lost baggage to soldiers. The baggage agents agreed to secure a complete report from the whole United States of all military baggage on hand at parcel rooms, express rooms, and baggage rooms. At the same time the Transportation Service ordered the commanders of all the military camps in the United States to send to Washington inventories of unclaimed baggage at the camps. The next step was to find out what soldiers had lost any baggage. Newspapers and service journals gave publicity to the project of the Transportation Service, and the various welfare societies added their assistance, with the result that the Service was able to restore hundreds of pieces of lost baggage to their rightful owners. Again the United States was saved a considerable sum of money which otherwise it would have had to pay out in settlement of claims. One task of the military authorities, similar to the restoration of lost baggage, but much more delicate and requiring a high degree of tact and sympathy in its administration, was that of returning to bereaved relatives the baggage of soldiers who had been killed in battle or who had died on foreign soil. This was so obviously a work of its own kind, requiring men peculiarly adapted to the handling of it, that it was placed in charge of a special service, both in France and in the United States. In France the Effects Bureau, as the organization was called, was part of the Quartermaster Department; in the United States a bureau of the same name, and virtually the successor of the overseas organization, was attached to the Transportation Service, and, like the Lost Baggage Section, operated exclusively at Hoboken. As long as the A. E. F. was in France in force the overseas Effects Bureau handled most of this work. It set up headquarters at the embarkation port at St. Nazaire, and there it checked up all the baggage it could find which was the property of deceased soldiers and forwarded it to the United States. Many of these effects were found in the general search of France for lost baggage, but thousands of pieces were stored at military hospitals and with troop organizations.