TECHNICAL SUPPLIES
The demobilization problem of the Corps of Engineers was a two-branched
one in that, while the Engineers had purchased heavily of supplies
in the United States, they had used those supplies principally in
France, where also they had placed contracts for the delivery of large
quantities of engineering materials which it was not expedient to ship
to the A. E. F. from the United States. When the armistice came, it
found great engineering production projects well advanced both in this
country and abroad, large surpluses of materials on hand on both sides
of the ocean, and in France an enormous activity in the construction of
buildings and other more or less permanently installed facilities for
the expedition. In France the Engineer Corps was charged with the duty
of building docks, port terminal facilities, storage depots, hospitals,
barracks, railroads, and other equipment for the Army, as well as that
of building roads and bridges, tunneling out mines, and stringing
wire for the troops at the front. It was the job of the Engineers
after the armistice to terminate this whole vast business, closing out
the contracts, settling with the contractors, disposing of surplus
supplies, and storing reserves for possible use by a future army of
large size.
At the time of the armistice the Engineers were engaged on more
than 600 separate construction projects in France. The work on
246 of these was stopped immediately, and the only permitted
post-armistice construction was that of facilities to be used during
the demobilization of the A. E. F. These cancellations accounted for
a saving of $135,000,000. The cancellations included projects for the
construction of 450 miles of railroad. Contracts with French producers
of engineering materials were canceled to the value of $30,000,000. In
settling with the contractors the Engineers followed the principle
that the American Government would compensate the foreign producers for
all losses sustained by them, but would pay no anticipated profits.
Eventually the French contractors’ claims were settled by the payment
of less than $1,500,000. Purchase orders placed with French producers,
calling for the delivery of materials worth about $13,000,000, were
canceled and settled for less than $90,000, of which sum about $60,000
was paid for supplies accepted in the settlement.
The Engineers in France found considerable constructive work to do
after the armistice. There were camps to be built at the American ports
of embarkation in France, nearly 10,000 miles of roads to be repaired,
and schools, theatres, and athletic fields, including the Pershing
Stadium near Paris, to be constructed. These, and the installations
put in before the armistice, constituted for the A. E. F. a physical
equipment on which the American Government had spent hundreds of
millions of dollars; yet after the return of the Expeditionary
Forces, the physical installation in France, taken as a whole, was
more of an embarrassment to the United States than an asset. Some of
the railroads, docks, and other great pieces of construction work
undoubtedly possessed great inherent future value to the French, and
we could expect to be well paid for turning them over to the French
Government; but as an offset there were scores of installations of no
peace-time value at all--roads, military railroads, and vast camps
of flimsy construction built upon fertile farm lands. The obligation
was upon the A. E. F. to restore these occupied French lands to their
original condition; but there were approximately 50,000 acres of French
farms so occupied, and to have restored this land would have taken the
time of 30,000 men for several years.
The great reserves of engineering supplies in France, as contrasted
with permanent installations, were indeed an asset, but not so much
of an asset as one would think. In the first place, to sell them to
private buyers in the European markets would have been a work of
several years, during which time the American Government would have had
to maintain in France a force of perhaps 5,000 men. Moreover, all that
time the engineering stores would have been constantly deteriorating,
so that their average value would not have been nearly so great as
their value at the time of the armistice.
These were the considerations which led to the decision to dispose
of all American engineering facilities in France, both supplies and
permanent or semi-permanent installations, in one blanket, lump-sum
deal with the French Government. The installations went to the French
at a price difficult to fix exactly, because in this same bargain was
included all other A. E. F. property not returned to the United States
and not sold to other foreign countries, the French paying the flat
price of $400,000,000 for the whole lot. It is estimated that the
American army installations in France accounted for $32,000,000 of
the total sum paid. If we accept that figure, then we must call it a
good bargain; for the French Government also assumed our obligations
to the French property owners, thus relieving us of the work of
restoring their farms to usable condition, ripping out the plumbing
and other modern conveniences with which we had profaned some of their
most ancient chateaux and monasteries, and doing a thousand similar
tasks, or, in lieu of such work, paying to the owners the cost of the
restoration in cash.
The few engineering supplies accumulated by the Americans in England
were sold to individual buyers. Enemy engineering _matériel_ captured
in France by the A. E. F. went to France in the lump-sum sale. In
Belgium the captured _matériel_ consisted principally of lumber and
sawmill equipment, worth about $250,000, and this went to Belgium to
pay that country for assuming the liability for the German ammunition
captured by our forces in Belgium.
It was the policy, because of the scarcity of shipping, to return no
heavy engineering supplies to the United States, but to bring back
such light technical equipment as searchlights, flash-ranging and
sound-ranging devices, instruments, and the like. It was, however,
expedient to return large quantities of steel rails and beams, because
these could serve as ballast in ships; and the Government also ordered
the return of a large quantity of road-building machinery for the use
of the Bureau of Public Roads. The Engineers saw to it that samples of
most of the engineering equipment used by other armies in the World War
were shipped to the United States for study here.
The property bargain with France disposed of everything except two
large claims against the United States: one for the American use of
the French railroads, and the other for the damage wrought by the
A. E. F.’s lumbering operations in the French forests. The railroad
claim was most intricate and complicated because of the inaccuracy
of the records and for other reasons, but it was finally settled in
full by allowing the French Government a credit of about $61,000,000
(435,000,000 francs valued at seven to the dollar). The forestry claim
was settled by allowing the French a credit of $10,000,000.
The claims of French contractors who had supplied us with engineering
materials were settled, along with nearly all other French contractors’
claims, by the United States Liquidation Commission in a blanket
negotiation with the French Government. One engineering claim,
however, remained unsettled. The contractor had agreed to supply 6,000
demountable barracks to the A. E. F., but he had delivered no buildings
by the beginning of the armistice and had made little progress in his
contract. Nevertheless, he presented a claim for damages amounting to
$600,000. The Liquidation Commission offered him $1,200, and he refused
it. His itemized costs included purchases of liquors, ladies’ dressing
tables, and oriental rugs, and he even admitted orally that one of his
“costs” was a mysterious payment of $4,000 to a French interpreter in
the office of the American engineer purchasing officer in France.
On the first day of the armistice there were nearly 200,000 tons
of engineering war materials produced and on hand in the United
States and awaiting shipment to France. This accumulation was worth
$31,000,000. It included hundreds of locomotives, thousands of cars,
and tens of thousands of tons of track materials, building materials,
general machinery, and tools. Meanwhile the American contracts for
the production of such supplies had reached a value of upwards of
$365,000,000, and production had reached such rates as 300 locomotives
and 1,800 railway cars a month. This business was terminated with the
utmost rapidity which was consistent with the manufacturer’s need
to convert his factory to other work without undue disturbance to
his labor force, and with the Government’s need to acquire adequate
military reserves of such supplies and to realize most on the money
which it had invested in the enterprise.
When the war industry came to an end, the War Department thus found
on its hands great quantities of engineering supplies. Some of these
supplies, such as cranes and road-building supplies, were turned over
to other departments of the Government for use in public works. Up to
May 15, 1920, engineering equipment and supplies had been sold on the
market with a gross cash return of over $110,000,000. Since the cost
of these materials had been about $128,000,000, the sales return was
about 85 per cent of the cost, an extraordinarily high recovery rate.
Foreign governments were heavy purchasers, particularly of railroad
locomotives and cars. The Engineers reserved from sale and stored in
various interior depots an immense reserve of supplies for possible
future military use. The principal items in this reserve are as follows:
[9]197 Consolidation-type locomotives.
[9]12,750 Cars, including gondolas, flat, box, tank, and dump cars.
736 Track-miles of standard-gauge railway materials.
353 Track-miles of light railway materials.
35 Divisions of heavy ponton bridge equipment.
6 Divisions of light ponton bridge equipment.
[10]67 Divisions of unit equipment.
81 60-inch open-type searchlight units (Cadillac trucks).
154 36-inch barrel-type searchlight units (Mack trucks).
1 Sound-ranging set.
10 Bull-Tucker recording sets.
25 Flash-ranging sets.
35 Ground-ranging sets.
The financial liquidation of the American war business of the
Engineers was unusually satisfactory, both because of the celerity
with which it was carried out and because of the low cost of its
termination to the Government. Shortly before the armistice many
of the most important purchasing activities of the Engineers were
transferred to the Director of Purchase, Storage, and Traffic, except
that the Chief of Engineers continued to buy railroad equipment and
several other sorts of heavy materials and also searchlights and
ranging apparatus. After the armistice the engineering contracts were
consequently terminated and settled by two agencies--the Engineers
themselves and the Division of Purchase, Storage, and Traffic. The
Engineer Claims Board was created to liquidate the war engineering
industry for the Corps of Engineers, acting, however, as subsidiary to
the War Department Claims Board. By May 15, 1920, the Engineer Claims
Board had settled up finally 168 of its total of 171 war claims. These
claims accounted for a total war business amounting to $238,000,000.
Production after the armistice resulted in the delivery of supplies
worth $17,000,000, which the War Department paid for at the contract
prices. The terminations equaled $218,500,000 in amount, and for this
termination the Government had to pay in cancellation costs only a
little more than $1,850,000, or less than 1 per cent of the original
obligation.
The orders for engineering supplies taken over by the Director of
Purchase, Storage, and Traffic amounted to $138,000,000. A considerable
part of this production was allowed to go through to completion,
and some of the business was transferred to other branches of the
War Department for settlement. The Director of Purchase and Storage
terminated entirely business amounting to $29,600,000 and paid in
termination charges $2,800,000--about 9 per cent of the original
obligation.
One engineer contractor, a builder of locomotives, whose contracts were
$55,000,000 in amount, canceled the entire business without cost to the
Government.
CHEMICAL WARFARE MATERIALS
The armistice and the order to begin demobilization played havoc for a
time with the Chemical Warfare Service, for the first assumption was
that the use of poisonous gases in warfare had originated and been
developed in, and would end with, the World War. On November 29, 1918,
the Director of the Chemical Warfare Service received an official
notice that “the amount of such [chemical warfare] equipment for the
needs of the Army after the passing of the present emergency will be
zero.” The gas-mask production division of the Chemical Warfare Service
was a highly organized and highly efficient body, and so rapidly did
it work after the armistice that it succeeded in dismantling its
gas-mask manufacturing plants and selling almost all the machinery
before Congress blocked the plan and, with new legislation, made the
Chemical Warfare Service a permanent branch of the regular military
establishment. The gas production division of the Service, however, was
not so precipitate, and it retained the facilities acquired during the
war for the production of poison gases and chemicals.
The Gas Defense Division, which produced the gas masks and other
defensive equipment, largely did its own manufacturing; but it
contracted extensively for the materials used in the manufacture.
On the day of the armistice its outstanding contracts amounted to
$5,000,000. By the end of the year 1918, or less than eight weeks
later, these contracts had been reduced by terminations to about
$150,000. The sales of surplus materials brought in about $8,000,000.
The termination of the production of gas masks at the two great plants
on Long Island was guided entirely by the best interests of the
thousands of employees, not one of whom was discharged until one of the
official employment agencies had found a place for him in commercial
life. In six months the demobilization of this branch of the Chemical
Warfare Service was complete.
So far as the employees were concerned, the demobilization of the
gas-making industry was not a difficult problem. All the plants were
owned by the Government, and most of the operatives were enlisted men
in uniform. Moreover, for nearly a month before the armistice there
had been almost a complete suspension of the manufacture of war gas,
due to a shortage of shell to be filled with gas.
The War Department’s equipment for making gas consisted of the Edgewood
Arsenal and a number of subsidiary plants located in various parts of
the country. The Edgewood Arsenal was retained, at first in stand-by
condition, with all machinery cleaned and oiled, all outdoor equipment
housed in safe storage, and all surfaces subject to deterioration
painted. The subsidiary plants, buildings, and equipment, were sold,
principally to manufacturers of chemicals and dyes. The sales were
conducted by the auction method, and the Government received good
prices.
Even some of the experts in the Chemical Warfare Service accepted the
common, but, as it proved, erroneous, opinion after the armistice that
the great quantities of war gases accumulated by this nation and others
during the war would be a dangerous menace as long as they were in
storage, and that they would have to be destroyed, presumably by being
dumped into the sea. These poisons were supposed to be so corrosive in
their action that no metal containers would hold them long. Since large
quantities of the war gases on hand after the armistice were loaded
into steel shell, it was assumed that these shell and their contents
would be a dead loss, except, perhaps, for some slight salvage value.
Events after the armistice seemed to strengthen this impression.
Leakage, for instance, was undoubtedly occurring in the gas shell
stored in our shell dumps in France; and it was dangerous for unmasked
men to work around some of these dumps. An even more convincing
demonstration of the instability of loaded gas projectiles was given
accidentally at Edgewood Arsenal after the armistice. Among the war
stocks there declared surplus was one consignment of 500,000 hand
grenades loaded with stannic chloride, a smoke-producing chemical.
These had been returned from France, and they were undoubtedly in
poor condition. On the voyage from France the chemical had begun to
eat holes through the metal of the grenades, and several thousand
of the grenades had had to be thrown overboard. The Chemical Warfare
Service sold these grenades to a chemical company. When a locomotive
backed down to couple to the cars containing the grenades, the slight
jar exploded fully half the missiles, and nobody could go near that
sidetrack for two or three days.
This incident apparently showed the impermanency of war gases. Actually
it demonstrated the impermanency only of stannic chloride, which is
highly corrosive to metal; and stannic chloride, in the quantities
produced, was a relatively unimportant war chemical. Nevertheless, in
the fear that other more highly toxic gases would also corrode and eat
through their containers, the Chemical Warfare Service dumped into the
ocean some twenty tons of phosgene and a large quantity of mustard-gas
shell. This was probably sheer waste, as it proved, because subsequent
experimentation established the fact that the most deadly of the war
gases could be safely stored for years if all water moisture were
driven from the chemicals themselves and all air exhausted from the
containers, leaving only the pure chemicals in contact with the metal
of the containers. Corrosion was found to be due to the presence of
moisture within the containers.
Nearly 1,400 tons of phosgene, chlorpicrin, mustard, and other deadly
gases made during the war are now stored at Edgewood; and to-day,
nearly three years after the armistice, their containers are still
in almost perfect condition. It is estimated that they will not
deteriorate in storage for at least ten years, a fact indicating that
poison gases are as durable in storage as smokeless powder. There
are also stored at Edgewood large quantities of loaded gas shell
manufactured during the war. These are frequently inspected and tested,
and the tests show that they are keeping well. The experts now estimate
that loaded gas shell will exist in good condition as long as a
battleship can give service, from the time of commissioning the ship to
the time when it is declared obsolete.
Other reserves of chemical warfare equipment now stored at Edgewood
include 51,000 Livens projectors, 88 trench mortars, 3,000,000
unfilled gas shell, and 700,000 unfilled hand grenades. There
are also in storage over 2,000,000 gas masks and 1,000 tons of
activated charcoal for use as a gas absorbent in the mask canisters.
The masks are stored in hermetically sealed boxes, a method of
preservation which, it is hoped, will protect the rubberized fabric
from deterioration for years to come. Other stored supplies include
protective suits, protective ointment, and gas alarm devices.
Such chemicals as the Chemical Warfare Service did sell after the
armistice brought good prices. The prices of many chemicals went
up after the armistice, and the Chemical Warfare Service profited
accordingly. The Service made a profit of 100 per cent on the phosgene
it sold and also found a good market for its chlorine.
Among the reserves stored at Edgewood was a considerable quantity of
the felt which was developed by Americans as a protection against
arsenical smoke, a deadly chemical never given a trial in the field
of battle, but regarded as an inevitable development in the expected
campaign in 1919. The production of toxic smoke was one of the most
interesting phases of the history of chemical warfare in the World War.
The candles which projected this smoke were perhaps the most appalling
weapon devised by any of the belligerents during the conflict, and
the armistice interrupted an Anglo-American project, well under way,
to asphyxiate the Germany Army with them in the spring of 1919. This
development was one of the deepest military secrets both in England and
the United States. Except for the French, not even the other Allies
were admitted to the secret.
The smoke candles employed an arsenical compound known as
diphenolchlorarsine. In the laboratory this was not a new substance--in
fact, none of the war gases actually used in the field was a new
development; and of projected poisons, so far as is known, only the
deadly Lewisite, the invention of Captain W. Lee Lewis in the Chemical
Warfare Service’s laboratory in Washington, was a new chemical creation
evolved specifically for use in war.[11] The other war gases had all
been known to organic chemistry, some of them for many years. So with
diphenolchlorarsine. It was first produced in Germany in the last
century, and the Germans also originated its use as a military weapon.
The Germans produced and used diphenolchlorarsine as a solid. The
substance was put into glass bottles, which, in turn, were inserted in
the T. N. T. filler of shell. The explosion pulverized the chemical
into a fog which had the advantage of being able to pass through the
cotton baffles in the canister of an ordinary gas mask. This fog was
highly irritating to the membrane of the nose and throat and caused
sneezing, which prevented a soldier gassed with it from putting on
his mask, so that he was left a victim to more lethal gases fired
simultaneously.
The British secured “dud” shell containing diphenolchlorarsine and
at once recognized this chemical as potentially much the most fatal
substance yet brought out in chemical warfare. But it was evident that
the German was not using it properly, in such a way as to release its
full toxic effect. The question was how to atomize diphenolchlorarsine
much more finely. British chemists and mechanical engineers eventually
succeeded in producing the substance in candles which burned and cast
out dense smoke. This smoke was diphenolchlorarsine so finely divided
that the American gas mask, the most effective mask of all, was utterly
powerless against it. The smoke particles passed freely through the
baffles; and, since the particles were minute solids and not true gas
at all, they were unaffected by the gas-absorbing charcoal and lime of
the mask canister.
Every masked experimenter gassed by this smoke declared that a mask
was worse than no protection at all. It is notable, too, that every
one gassed, without knowing that he was merely reiterating what others
before him had said, declared that, if he had not been able to escape
quickly from the concentration, he would have shot himself rather than
endure the agony longer. As to the persistence and diffusibility of
the smoke, at one demonstration when two candles were burned in a
desolate spot in England, civilians were slightly gassed in a village
several miles away.
So much for the substance which outdid any of the horrors of the
most horrible of all wars. But the weapon was useless unless
protection against it could also be developed. America invented
the protection--thick felt which was a textile triumph in that it
absolutely caught and held the smoke particles, yet permitted fairly
easy breathing through itself. The plan was to issue this felt in
small pieces which the soldiers could wrap around their canisters, in
order that all inhalation should be through the felt. The felt-wrapped
canister would then be placed back in its knapsack. In the joint
project, we were to produce the protective felt and the British
the candles. The British had ordered several million of these and
were actually producing them in large quantities at the time of the
armistice. By that date the American mills were turning out the felt by
thousands of yards, and our Chemical Warfare Service was also planning
a factory in which to produce diphenolchlorarsine candles. All this
activity was an intense secret in both countries. The program was being
directed at a certain week in the spring of 1919, when, at a favorable
hour, the troops on our side having quietly been protected against the
smoke, it was proposed to fire the candles everywhere along the front.
The gas warfare organizations of Great Britain and America confidently
expected that when that lethal infusion had disappeared, the German
Army would practically have ceased to exist, and the war would be over.
There is reason to believe that the German also realized the
inefficiency of diphenolchlorarsine when fired in shell and had
followed an independent line of development which led him to the
production of candles. It is asserted that such candles were made in
Germany before the armistice. It is doubtful, however, whether the
German succeeded in developing a protection against the smoke.
After the armistice our Chemical Warfare Service continued an
independent development of arsenical smoke. The problem was a
mechanical one. The chemical is driven off as smoke by means of heat.
If the heat is too great, the substance will burn and be changed into
non-toxic compounds. If the heat is too mild, the smoke will not be
thrown off efficiently. This problem we have solved.
Mention should be made also of that other chemical secret of the war,
Lewisite. In one sense Lewisite can be termed a development of mustard
gas, for the laboratory process of making mustard suggested to Captain
Lewis certain analogous chemical reactions, out of one of which came
the hitherto unknown liquid which was named after him. Like mustard,
Lewisite is a so-called vesicant, a substance which blisters the skin,
but it is much more powerful; for, whereas mustard gas merely burns,
Lewisite is absorbed through the skin into the system. Three drops of
this chemical placed on the belly of a rat will kill the animal in two
or three hours, and it is believed that this would be the effect of a
similar quantity sprinkled on the skin of a man. Like mustard, too,
Lewisite gives off fumes slowly, and these fumes have a burning, deadly
effect.
Before and since the armistice there have been other developments of
war gases in this country, and for some of these, as well as for some
of the better known gases, there is, or can be, civilian use. Believing
that chemical warfare has come to stay as long as there shall be wars,
the Chemical Warfare Service has sought since the armistice to develop
peace-time uses for war gases in order that there may be a continuous
production of them, with a simultaneous training of chemists on whom
the Government can rely in time of war. A new tear gas which has
been developed is called chloracetophenone. The presence of a minute
quantity of this gas in the air has a blinding lachrymatory effect
upon the eyes of one caught in it; yet the gas is non-toxic. Various
metropolitan police forces are experimenting with this gas to determine
its effect in dispersing mobs. Another distressing, but not dangerous,
gas bears the staggering chemical name of diphenylaminechlorarsine.
It is temporarily blinding and causes nausea and vomiting, but it is
not regarded as a lethal gas. It is proposed to use this in protecting
vaults in which valuables are stored. Phosgene is used in making
brilliant dyes, and it can also be used to exterminate rats. Chlorine
is a widely used disinfectant. With other war gases it is proposed
to exterminate numerous sorts of weevil and other insect pests which
annually cause great damage to American crops.[12]
SIGNAL SUPPLIES
Signal corps contracts on the day of the armistice were 1,244 in
number. They contemplated a production of supplies worth upwards of
$45,000,000. Telephones, telegraph equipment, radio, field glasses,
photographic cameras, pigeons, wrist watches--these were the sorts of
things the Signal Corps procured.
The termination of this industry was guided almost solely by industrial
conditions. With most signaling supplies it was impracticable to
build up large war reserves. There is perhaps no branch of modern
mechanical development to which applied science pays more attention
than it does to perfecting the means of communication. Progress is
rapid, and therefore any large reserves of supplies set aside by the
Signal Corps were likely to become obsolete and without value after
a few years. Moreover, although the war industry of the Signal Corps
scored its greatest production records with such common things as
telephone and telegraph instruments and wire, all this equipment was
of special design unknown in ordinary commercial use and therefore
without value to it. Consequently there was not the usual good business
reason to continue production under the well-advanced signal corps
contracts--namely, that a greater cash recovery could be obtained from
the sale of finished products than from the junk sale of semi-finished
materials. Finally, many of the signal corps supplies--and this applies
particularly to radio--were heavily protected by valid patents.
These patents the Government made free with during the war, but the
existence of the patents virtually precluded the Government from
selling its excess radio equipment after the war. For these and other
reasons the signal corps war business was terminated at precisely the
rate at which the manufacturing equipment and its operatives could be
diverted to other work.
Unlike the Ordnance Department and the Air Service, the Signal Corps
was not organized before the armistice by manufacturing districts, but
conducted all its business from the central office in Washington. The
Washington headquarters, however, maintained intimate contact with the
contractors through its so-called flying squadron, an organization
of officers who visited the war factories, inspected their work, and
coöperated with the producers in the solution of their shop problems.
This same organization after the armistice conducted the field work of
the industrial liquidation, acting under the direction of the Signal
Corps Board of Contract Termination, which, in turn, was subsidiary to
the War Department Claims Board.
The new and unused materials acquired before the industry could be
terminated were disposed of in various ways. Adequate war reserves of
supplies were placed in safe storage. During the war the Signal Corps
had built up a large training school at Camp Alfred Vail in New Jersey.
This camp has been retained as a permanent adjunct to the Signal
Corps. To the warehouses of Camp Vail were sent large quantities of
surplus signal corps supplies, both finished articles and partially
manufactured apparatus, there to be studied and developed in the
laboratories of the camp. The Post Office Department took a certain
amount of radio telephone and telegraph apparatus for use on its mail
planes. The Forest Service took radio and also some of the homing
pigeons for use in its fire-protection service in the national forests.
Other supplies were sold to the public.
The Signal Corps, as one of its duties, created and compiled a
photographic history of America’s participation in the World War, both
in motion pictures and in “still” views. The hundreds of thousands
of negatives in this history were collected in Washington after the
armistice and stored in a specially constructed building which is not
only fireproof, but which provides air of uniform temperature and
dryness, to prevent rapid deterioration of the negatives. A complete
catalogue of views was prepared, and the sale of duplicates to the
public was authorized. Many of the illustrations in these volumes are
taken from that collection.
The disposal of surplus A. E. F. signaling equipment was notable in
that it included a large sale to the French Government of equipment not
embraced by the general bulk sale of 1919. When the armistice came the
A. E. F. was provided with hundreds of miles of main-line telephone
and telegraph cables, hooking up a complete net of branch lines,
wires, and exchanges, all of it American-made and American-operated.
The question was whether to rip it all out, after which it would be
represented by some thousands of tons of junk, or to sell it intact as
it was; and there was but one possible customer, the French Government,
which monopolizes telegraph and telephone communication in France.
Signal corps officers in France took up with the French Government,
directly after the armistice, the question of the sale of these
installations to France, and the negotiations were so well advanced
in the spring of 1919, when the United States Liquidation Commission
(which conducted the blanket sale) arrived, that the signal corps sale
was specifically exempted from the bulk sale. France paid $6,400,000
for the installations. France and England jointly paid $130,000 for
the American cross-Channel cable, laid with great difficulty (and
at an approximate cost of $238,000) between Cackmere, England, and
Cap d’Antifer, France.[13] Negotiations were also under way for the
purchase by the French Government of a large quantity of American
wire-system construction material, but this was finally included in the
supplies delivered under the terms of the bulk sale. Sales to other
governments and to individuals were small.
MOTOR VEHICLES
All of the A. E. F.’s surplus motor vehicles (a classification
including bicycles and trailers as well as trucks, automobiles,
motorcycles, and sidecars), as this surplus existed in August, 1919,
went to the French Government under the terms of the bulk sale.
The sale value of these vehicles was estimated by our appraisers
at $100,000,000, an estimate arrived at as follows: the original
purchase cost had been $310,000,000. Wear and tear, however, had
reduced the usable value to the Army to $220,000,000. A second-hand
machine, however, must be sold at a second-hand price, which will not
represent the value of the machine to the owner disposing of it. A fair
second-hand sale value of this equipment (assuming that the vehicles
would be sold to private purchasers) was estimated at $132,000,000. But
sale in bulk to the French Government relieved the United States of
the cost of disposing of the vehicles in various sized lots to private
purchasers. It was estimated that the overhead expense of selling the
vehicles to individuals would be approximately $32,000,000. As one item
in this sales expense, it would require the services of 3,000 troops
for one year to take care of the unsold vehicles. In that interval
there would be a further depreciation in the value of the vehicles.
Therefore, the A. E. F. was willing to throw off $32,000,000 and make
to the French Government a flat price of $100,000,000 for the equipment.
Before this sale, however, there had been sales to others, both
governments and speculators. The Poles and some of the new Slavic
nations bought nearly 3,000 vehicles from the A. E. F. American
motor vehicles in England (they were not many) were sold at auction.
The Italian Government bought about 200 trucks, ambulances, and
motorcycles. As our troops were demobilized from the Army of Occupation
in Germany, they left a surplus of over 14,000 motor vehicles. These
were sold to a British syndicate for $25,000,000. Over 1,200 trucks of
German make, acquired by the A. E. F. under the armistice terms, were
sold to a German dealer.
[Illustration:
_Photo from Engineer Department_
AIR VIEW OF A. E. F. ORDNANCE DOCKS]
[Illustration:
_Photo by Air Service_
A GAS DEMONSTRATION]
The war orders for motor vehicles (including bicycles and trailers)
of all sorts from American factories called for the production of
434,000 of them. Of this number approximately 110,000 were bicycles and
trailers, the rest being motor vehicles proper. The war industry had
produced great numbers of these vehicles before the armistice, 118,000
having been shipped to the A. E. F., while thousands of others were
either in use by the Army within the United States or were awaiting
shipment overseas on the day of the armistice. By the fourth day of the
armistice, termination requests had stopped the production of 178,000
vehicles under the war orders. The rest were allowed to go through
to completion. Adding to the reserves on hand at the signing of the
armistice the production after the armistice, we find that the results
of the war industry were to provide the Army in this country with
138,000 motor vehicles, none of which had crossed the ocean.
[Illustration:
_Photo by Signal Corps_
MOTOR TRANSPORT IN FRANCE]
[Illustration:
_Photo by Signal Corps_
PART OF A. E. F.’S SURPLUS MOTOR EQUIPMENT]
The continuation of production after the armistice was allowed for
numerous reasons. A motor truck is an article readily salable at a good
price. Its fabricated parts, however, have little value other than
that of scrap metal. Moreover, to permit the completion of contracts
saved the Government from the payment of cancellation charges. For
example, as a result of these business considerations one order for
8,000 Standard B trucks, under which order production had started about
November 1, 1918, was allowed to go through to completion. The Standard
B truck was an assemblage of standard parts. Many factories made the
parts, and a few, under contract with the Government, assembled the
parts and turned out the completed chassis. To have terminated the
contracts would have left on the Government’s hands a mass of parts
of doubtful sales value and an obligation to pay heavy cancellation
charges besides. The completed trucks could be sold for nearly all, if
not all, the money the Government had put into them. The same was true
of some of the other standardized trucks.
Production was continued in some instances to place in the Army’s
hands certain sorts of trucks of which the Army was short even after
the great production ending with the armistice. Finally, many of the
truck factories were working exclusively on government contracts, and
to have ended this work forthwith would have thrown tens of thousands
of men out of work. It is notable, however, that two of the largest
contractors, the Ford Motor Company and the Dodge Motor Company, both
of Detroit, agreed to accept termination of all work uncompleted on
November 16, 1918, at no cost to the Government except the cost of
uncompleted materials which they would be unable to use in their
commercial enterprises.
The whole vast war business of building motor vehicles for the Army was
terminated at a cost of $12,300,000 to the Government. As an offset to
this cost, the Government took in materials worth $4,100,000, making
the net cost of termination about $8,200,000.
MEDICAL SUPPLIES
The armistice turned what had been an insufficient quantity of medical
supplies for the expanding, fighting American Army into an enormous
surplus for the demobilizing Army and the future permanent military
establishment. The total purchases by the Medical Corps had reached
a value of nearly $250,000,000. Of these purchases, supplies to the
value of about $11,000,000 had been procured in Europe, principally in
France. The supplies on hand on the day of the armistice and delivered
on contract afterwards were worth $110,000,000.
With the warehouses filled with hospital equipment, medicines,
ambulances, and the other articles which the military surgeons used,
the war industry producing these things was terminated expeditiously
after the armistice. In the United States over 1,400 contracts
and purchase orders, calling for the production of supplies worth
$60,000,000, were terminated at a net cancellation cost of $3,000,000.
Deliveries after the armistice from American factories gave to the
Medical Corps supplies worth $32,000,000. In France and England
the contract cancellations saved $3,500,000. These cancellations
terminated, among other things, a project which would in time have
delivered to the A. E. F. twenty-nine complete ambulance trains, each
with sixteen coaches. Nineteen such trains had been delivered to the
A. E. F. before the armistice.
In the general bulk sale of A. E. F. property to the French Government
went American medical supplies worth $34,000,000. The Medical Corps
turned over to the American Red Cross in France supplies worth
$9,000,000 for use in the relief of the stricken populations of
Europe. To other governments the A. E. F. sold medical supplies worth
$6,000,000. The rest of the medical supplies in Europe were returned to
the United States. In this country the surplus medical supplies were
distributed in various ways--to the Public Health Service, into the
army reserves, and (by sale) to the public.