The Bureau at Hoboken was compelled to accept responsibility for many unfortunate occurrences in which it was not at fault. The procedure behind a letter telling relatives in this country of the existence of property which they had inherited upon the death of a soldier was approximately as follows: after the man died the officers of his immediate organization made up an inventory of his property; and this inventory, together with the baggage itself, eventually reached the Effects Bureau. It was usually this original inventory which went to the relatives. Often enough, however, the dead man’s property was not all in his possession when he died. Perhaps he had been billeted in villages where he had left souvenirs and other cherished but not easily portable trinkets, intending to go back some time and secure his property before he started back for the United States. He was unlikely to have left among his effects any record of these articles; and yet his relatives were quite likely to know of the existence of the property from the soldier’s letters home. The baggage search in France raked together a considerable quantity of this property, the ownership of much of which could not be determined by any identifying marks. Consequently, when relatives wrote to the Effects Bureau to reproach that service with not having returned all of the deceased soldier’s property the Bureau was often able to find the articles among the lost baggage at Hoboken. Frequently, however, the Bureau had to confess itself unable to locate the lost articles and to bear the brunt of any displeasure that followed such an admission. After the _Tuscania_ disaster the British authorities shipped to Hoboken a miscellaneous collection of unidentified articles of value, such as watches and finger rings taken from the bodies of drowned American soldiers. It seemed to be an impossible task to restore these trinkets to the relatives of the rightful owners, but the Effects Bureau nevertheless made the attempt to do it. The Bureau wrote letters to all the next of kin to the soldiers who went down with the _Tuscania_, asking them to send in descriptions of any articles known to have been in the possession of the soldiers when they boarded the ship. The replies brought back duplicate prints of photographs carried in watch cases, dimensions of finger rings, descriptions, and other identifications, which enabled the Bureau to restore many of the articles to the proper heirs in this country. After an arrival of identified effects in Hoboken, the Effects Bureau wrote letters to the immediate relatives or other heirs of the deceased soldiers describing the property on hand. With each letter went a legal form, to be filled out and executed before a notary public, establishing the right of the proper heirs to receive the effects. Upon the receipt of executed forms, the Bureau sent forward the effects at the expense of the Government.