The War Trade Board, by limiting exports, conserved the products of the country for the use of our own people and the people of the nations associated with us in the great conflict so that these products might be used in whatever way would best aid the prosecution of the war; it so controlled and supervised the shipping of goods to associated and neutral nations as to conserve shipping space for military uses; it regulated with the closest surveillance the shipping of goods to neutral countries in order to make sure that they would not be re-shipped in covert ways to enemy destinations; it hunted out enemy and enemy-controlled firms in our own and neutral lands, closed up the former and prevented trade with the latter, although it also in neutral countries made every effort to find and list for American merchants, in the place of these forbidden firms, others in the same lines not friendly with the enemy with whom trade could be carried on; and it so arranged trade with neutral nations as to supply them with necessities, under guarantees that these should not be reëxported, in return for their export to the United States and her associates of certain needed products and permission for this country to use their shipping. This mobilization of the commercial arm of the United States soon proved its value and the government’s control of trade through the War Trade Board was a highly important factor in hastening the winning of the war. The firm hand which was laid on commerce with certain neutral nations of Europe, through which Germany had been getting large amounts of food and supplies, finally made effective the blockade of the enemy. The trade of those nations with the United States during the two and a half years before our entrance into the war had jumped to enormous figures, many times its previous volume. When the War Trade Board assumed control of American commerce it fell, in the case of one nation, to one-twentieth of what it had been in the first year of the war, while the total exports of food stuffs of the neutrals of northern Europe to the Central Powers declined in a few months by from sixty-five to eighty-five per cent of what they had been in the previous year. The Board procured, by trade arrangements with European neutrals, the use of shipping for the United States and Great Britain amounting to over two million tons, for which there was the greatest need for transportation of troops, munitions, foods and supplies to Europe. For this same purpose the Board conserved much tonnage by practically suspending, for several months, trade in many commodities with South America and the Orient. Working in harmony with the War Industries Board, it prevented the shipment out of the United States of all materials needed by this country and the associated nations for the swift and efficient prosecution of the war.