Never had America had such a test of its organizing capacity as in its formation of the Service of Supply. Its problems, both in number and complexity as well as in the size of the task, the amount of material and personnel required, were far greater than those of the Panama Canal. The leisure which any undertaking permits in carrying out plans and the dependence which may be placed upon the receipt of tools and material in time of peace were both wanting under the pressure of war. Personnel for this enterprise was summoned from our engineers, our business men and experts, and from the ranks of skilled labor in every civil branch who were for the first time brought together in a national organization in foreign surroundings where they faced many difficulties with which they were unfamiliar, under the direction of the regular army, which had to reconcile all policies with the requirements of the front line, and which had to expand its imagination and its powers of organization from a quartermaster's business of a little regular army to the mastery of unparalleled forces in the direction of reserve officers who had been used to handling great business enterprises. Next to the position of General Pershing that of the commanding general of the Service of Supply was the most important in France. It was proposed at one time from Washington that he should have authority coordinate with General Pershing's direct from Washington; but this was strongly opposed on the ground that the commander in chief of the fighting army must be supreme over every branch if he were to be responsible for the success of a campaign. Major General James G. Harbord, who had been the first chief of staff of the American Expeditionary Force and later commanded the marine brigade of the 2d Division and afterward the division itself in the Château-Thierry operations, was summoned from the front late in July, 1918, at a time when the rapid arrival of troops from America and the prospects of the terrific demands of the campaigns which would ensue made it vital that there should be administrative reform in the Service of Supply by some man not only of high organizing ability but with the personal quality that inspires coordination among his adjutants, if the Service of Supply were to be equal to the enormous demands which would be placed upon it in the next few months.