Jan., 1918] The Relation of War to Chemislry 11 



foreign chemistry in particular, and not one word of American 

 chemistry. Yet in his own city in the last three years has 

 sprung up a chemical industry that is marvelous, and which he 

 did not know existed. In his own line, organic chemistry, was 

 a plant for making certain organic materials used in war by a 

 series of steps that has no counterpart in chemical literature for 

 the magnitude and conception of its chemical engineering 

 operations. It is not only the largest scale upon which all of 

 its many operations have ever been conducted but its chem- 

 istry is a series of highly interesting adaptations and develop- 

 ments. When peace comes again, if that plant still prospers it 

 will be a useful aid in the solution of one of our most important 

 engineering problems of this generation. x\mericans are not 

 wizards that they do in two years what it took German chemists 

 decades to work into. Such things are only done where the 

 ability exists and the power born of experience in solving similar 

 chemical problems, is possessed. It is not right to our students, 

 you who teach, to praise the competitors of our compatriots and 

 never stir yourselves to be informed on what our own country- 

 men are doing, even if, the foreign achievements are served up 

 to us, ready to teach as paid advertisement of German dye- 

 makers. The German general staff has learned, if others have 

 not, that German chemical achievement which is great indeed, 

 is no sign that equal ability does not exist elsewhere. The Allies 

 and America improvised a munitions industry in two years to 

 match their machine of forty years preparation. Such an 

 achievement is only the natural result of our present industrial 

 chemical development in America and the Allied countries. 

 There is nothing in the rate of American industrial chemical 

 development of which any American need be ashamed. 



The progress in industrial chemistry and chemical engineer- 

 ing in the last three years itself, in this country, has been 

 wonderful. Let me protest, however, that this is no ground for 

 the philosophy which I understand obtains in some quarters, 

 that war is a desirable, natural, logical or sort of evolutionary 

 benefit. All this progress is in spite of war. War could force us 

 to do nothing we did not possess capacity for before. Because 

 war changes the normal relations between supply and demand, 

 cost and selling price, gives us opportunities to do only what we 

 could do anyway, if the same demand arose from any other 

 cause. 



