If, the next time you meet an officer of Engineers, you will observe his uniform closely, you will perceive that the buttons of his tunic, instead of being embossed with the arms of the United States, like all other branches of the service, bear a device consisting of an eagle, a castle, a rising sun, and the motto “_Essayons_.” Like the bow of black velvet, called a “flash,” which the Royal Welsh Fusiliers have sewn at the back of their collars to commemorate the fact that they were the last regiment in the British Army to wear the pigtail, so the buttons of the Engineers serve to remind their wearers that the famous organization is as old as the nation, tracing its history back to the Corps of Artillerists and Engineers of the Continental Army. “_Essayons_”—“Let us try.” One likes the quiet confidence of the motto. “Can you make roads for my guns through the swamps of the Wilderness?” asked Grant. “Let us try,” replied the Engineers—and the roads were built. “Can you build docks for disembarking ten thousand men a day and railways to carry those men to the front?” asked Pershing. “Let us try,” the Engineers responded—and almost overnight miles of docks and networks of rails appeared as though at the wave of a magician’s wand. “Can you locate the enemy’s guns by their sound? Can you keep our troops supplied with water? Can you print maps? Can you make dugouts? Can you operate search-lights? Can you dredge harbors for the entrance of our transports? Can you build highways and keep them in repair? Can you quarry the stone for those highways? Can you cut a million feet of lumber a day? Can you design better types of armored cars, sound-detectors, mobile cranes, portable sawmills, listening apparatus, mapping cameras, steel bridges, barbed-wire entanglements, than any in existence? And, if the necessity arises, can you fight?” “_Essayons_,” answered the Engineers—whereupon all these things were done. Whenever the army has had work to be done which no one else knew how to do, they have sent for the Engineers. Who designed, built, and operated our tanks before the organization of the Tank Corps? The Engineers. Who organized the Gas and Flame Regiment? The Engineers. The Camouflage Corps? The Engineers, of course. Who did the mining, quarrying, timber-cutting, well-driving, dock, bridge, road, railway, and camp building for our armies overseas? Again, the Engineers. Indeed, I doubt if any organization of any army in the Great War can show such a record of varied activities and successful accomplishments as the Corps of Engineers. One can say of the American Engineer, as Kipling said of the British Marine: “There isn’t a job on the top o’ the earth the beggar don’t know nor do— You can leave ’im at night on a bald man’s ’ead to paddle ’is own canoe; ... They think for ’emselves, an’ they steal for ’emselves, an’ they never ask what’s to do, But they’re camped an’ fed, an’ they’re up an’ fed, before our bugle’s blew.”