INTER-ALLY COUNCIL OF WAR PURCHASES AND FINANCE. This council (commonly called in British documents the Inter-Allied Council, etc.), was set up by the Al lied Governments in the late summer of 1917 with the object of, firstly, making recommendations as to the supplies and finance required by the various Allies in the United States of America, and secondly, of dealing in an advisory capacity with the prob lems involved by Allied purchases of all kinds in the world at large. Two offices were set up, at Sunderland House in London, and in Paris. Mr. Oscar T. Crosby, the United States delegate in the Council, was its president throughout the period of its activ ity, and was assisted by Mr. Paul Cravath as advisory counsel. The British members of the council were Mr. (later Sir) Austen Chamberlain, General Smuts, and Lord Buckmaster.
The council's first task was to satisfy public opinion in the United States, and in this it was substantially successful. In re lation to the control and co-ordination of the purchase of sup plies, the council may be said to have succeeded by failing. The data, upon which it should in principle have set out purchasing programmes of the principal governments, were necessarily out of date by the time they could be adequately examined.
Owing to the entry of the United States into the war, the financ ing of supplies bought in North America ceased to be a major preoccupation, and shipping became more and more concentrated in the North Atlantic. Shipping considerations therefore, at this stage of the war, exercised a much more effective control over pur chasing programmes than the question of finance. Such further control as was possible in reinforcement of Treasury control was provided by the various allied programme committees which were gradually constituted to deal with government demands for cer tain commodities, and as the circle of government trading was constantly enlarged these commodities came to cover a very large part of the field of Allied expenditure abroad.
(A. McF; X.)