[Illustration: _Photo by Howard E. Coffin_ VICTORY WAR TROPHIES IN PLACE DE LA CONCORDE, PARIS] [Illustration: _Photo by Howard E. Coffin_ RECONSTRUCTION BRITISH SOLDIER’S GRAVE IN FIELD NEAR MEAUX] It was necessary for the organization not only to remain intact, but to speed the activities of demobilization as it had sped those of mobilization. The pre-armistice spirit had in some way to be maintained. On November 11 the war was costing the United States about $50,000,000 a day. Every day of indecision in adopting the plan of demobilization and every day’s delay in carrying out the plan added tremendously to the burden of taxation that would rest upon the nation for generations to come. Demobilization meant, first of all, the disbanding of the American Army. Whatever economic considerations might graduate the termination of war industry, no such considerations were to be permitted to retard the homeward progress of the troops. Four million American homes demanded their men at once; and whether the immediate return of the troops meant unemployment and distress or not, the Government was determined to comply with the demand. The creation of the Army and its movement toward France had involved the rail transportation of about 8,000,000 soldiers in special cars and trains. The home movement would require an operation almost as great. Of the 2,000,000 men of the American Expeditionary Forces, more than half had crossed the ocean in foreign ships, all of which, of course, were withdrawn from our service immediately after the armistice. The unbroken eastward transatlantic procession of troopships had continued for about fourteen months. On the first day of the armistice the transatlantic ferrying capacity of the American-flag troopships was not much in excess of 100,000 men a month. Moreover, practically all our troop transports had reached the point of having to be laid up for reconditioning. Assuming, however, that they could be kept in continuous operation, they could not bring back to America more than two-thirds of the troops in the time it had taken the whole A. E. F. to cross to France. Yet the problem of demobilization was to repatriate the A. E. F. in that time at most. Demobilization involved a final cash settlement with everyone of the four million men under arms; computations of back pay, complicated as they were with allotments and payments for government war bonds and the war risk insurance; and, finally, the payment to each soldier of the sixty-dollar bonus voted by the Congress. Demobilization also included the care of the wounded for many months after the fighting ceased, their physical and mental reconstruction, and their reëducation to enable them to take useful places in the world.