it also set up within the Government great new agencies for carrying out the Government’s beneficent purposes toward the ex-service men. On the day of the armistice there were 200,000 patients in the A. E. F. hospitals in France. It was at once realized that the best interests of these men demanded their prompt return to the United States; for nowhere else could they secure the treatment most certain to restore them to complete health. The Medical Corps at home was ready for them. For months it had been constructing throughout the United States a great chain of specialized hospitals in anticipation of a heavy American casualty list in France. Many of the 200,000 hospitalized members of the A. E. F. recovered in time to recross the ocean as members of regular military units, but more than half of them returned as patients needing more or less extended treatment in the military hospitals in this country. The policy in France was to move these men either in ambulances or in hospital trains from the interior hospitals up to hospitals near the ports of embarkation. There they were placed aboard the special hospital ships or given accommodations on the regular transports. Practically all of them debarked either at New York or at Newport News. New York could accommodate 24,000 patients at once in its regular and special debarkation hospitals. The two regular debarkation hospitals in New York--one located in the Greenhut Building and the other in the Grand Central Palace--each had beds for over 3,000 patients, and in addition the Army could call upon thirteen additional hospitals in New York in an emergency. At Newport News there was a regular and emergency equipment of 10,000 hospital beds for incoming overseas patients.