78 Journal of the Mitchell Society [Nov. 



my earlier plea, may be at any moineut completely shattered. 

 In such an event the responsibility of all chemists in this 

 country will be added to by the impelling call of patriotism. 

 That the contributions of our science are of the highest value 

 in modern warfare is daily attested in the reportorial ac- 

 counts of the new developments among the now contending 

 nations. Who would dare say that the innovations of chem- 

 istr}' in the methods of warfare have reached a limit ? 



In view of this recognized fundamental importance would 

 it not be well, in these days of talk of preparedness, to con- 

 sider the question of chemical preparedness. Ships, guns 

 and shells are necessary, yes, but most largely as a means to 

 an end, and that end the effecting of a violent chemical re- 

 action at a point more or less distant. Xaturally in matters 

 of preparedness there are topics whose public discussion is 

 inadvisable, but there is one to which I do not hesitate to 

 allude, for the facts are all matters of published record, and 

 that is the question of the visible supply of sodium nitrate in 

 this country. 



In these days of rapidly shifting international relations 

 the only sound and rational policy is national self-contained- 

 ness. Blessed with a rich heritage of wonderful and varied 

 natural resources, and, in our isolation, confident of freedom 

 from grave international complications, we have received 

 potash supplies from Germany with but scant forethought, 

 save in the national Bureau of Soils; and now, today, agri- 

 culture is seriously threatened ; so, too, textile manufacturers, 

 reaping a bountiful harvest from the laboratories and dye- 

 stuff factories of Germany, have given no helping hand to 

 the struggling young home industry which with a fair show 

 would now have been able to meet the present serious de- 

 ficiencies. Of far greater importance, at least from the 

 standpoint of preparedness for war, is the fact that at present 

 we are dependent solely on Chili for supplies of sodium ni- 

 trate, the crude material for nitric acid, that sine qua non in 

 the manufacture of all modern explosives, whether guncotton, 

 trinitrotoluene, picric acid, fulminating mercury or wliat not. 



