We record with much regret the death of Sir John
Cowan at Menton last Saturday, at the age of fifty-nine. As Quarter- master-General to the Forces throughout the war he rendered magnificent publio service, and there can be little doubt that the heavy and continuous strain on his energies led to his premature death. The work of clothing, feeding, housing, and transporting the vast new armies which sprang, as it were, out of the ground in the autumn and winter of 1914 devolved entirely upon the Quartermaster-General, and was astonishingly well done, though the task was ten times as great—even at first— as anyone had foreseen. Even when the Ministry of Munition. had come into being, the responsibilities of the Quartermaster- General were incalculable. The supply services at one period of the war were feeding seven and a-half million British troops a day on many different fronts, and never failed.
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