Only those who saw the low-lying, swamp-lined shores of Gunpowder Neck during the winter and spring of 1917-1918 can fully picture the obstacles with which our gas-makers were confronted. Have you ever seen a Virginia road after the spring rains? Yes? Imagine, then, this Virginian clay mixed with Mexican adobe and diluted with New Orleans molasses and you will have a slight idea of the nature of the soil over which enormous quantities of material had to be hauled and on which was erected the greatest manufactory of poison-gas in the world. It may be recalled, moreover, that the winter of 1917-1918 was the severest in the memory of the oldest inhabitant. For weeks on end the shores of the Chesapeake resembled the shores of Greenland, but, in spite of cold and mud and rain, in spite of apparently insurmountable difficulties in obtaining building materials and in securing transportation for those materials on the congested railways, in spite of strikes and labor troubles of every kind, the work forged steadily ahead, officers and men working themselves as a negro teamster works his mules. Scores of miles of roads were built and metalled, a network of railways was laid down, and over them snorted panting locomotives hauling endless caravans of freight-cars. The building sites were illuminated by hundreds of arc-lights, the working force was divided into shifts, and the reservation resounded both night and day to the creak of derricks, the clatter of riveters, and the rasp of saws. A total of 558 buildings were constructed on the grounds of the arsenal, including, in addition to the huge structures of steel and concrete which comprised the filling and the various chemical plants, 36 cantonments with quarters for 8,400 men, 3 field-hospitals, a base hospital with more than 400 beds, bunk-houses for civilian workmen, officers’ barracks, Y. M. C. A. and Knights of Columbus huts, and one of the most completely equipped laboratories in the country. Edgewood is, in reality, a collection of great manufacturing plants, with all that implies in housing, sanitation, heating, storage, hospitalization, and other agencies. And the work was done by men every one of whom, from the commanding officer down, was in civil life when the war began. Not a single officer or man of the Regular Army had any responsibility for the construction or operation of Edgewood Arsenal from the day that the ex-professor of chemistry, Colonel Walker, assumed command, until its operations were terminated by the Armistice.