INTRODUCTION ix 



wheat was thus raised from 15 bushels to the acre, the average 

 in the United States, to 3; bushel-; *o the acre. The Chilean 

 nitrate beds were far away, and an interruption of overseas 

 traffic would inevitably accompany the outbreak of hostilities. 

 Thus German chemists applied, not merely the electric arc 

 process of nitrogen fixation rendered commercially possible 

 by the waterfalls of Norway, but other processes now effec- 

 tively utilized on an immense scale within Germany itself. 

 The results, rendered plainly visible during the war by the 

 enormous quantities of ammunition expended along the west- 

 ern front, will be no less important in the economic restoration 

 of the country through intensive agriculture. 



Thus the very agencies of war will become powerful factors 

 in the competitions of peace, and the research methods from 

 which they sprang will play a far larger part in the world than 

 ever before. 



At the outbreak of the war the statesmen of the Allies were 

 but little concerned with the interests of research. Necessity, 

 as we have seen, soon opend their eyes, and the results so 

 rapidly obtained convinced them that a radical change of policy 

 was essential. Perceiving the enormous advantages derived 

 by Germany from the utilization of science, and with wise an- 

 ticipation of the needs of the future, they took steps to remedy 

 the earlier neglect of science which the war had rendered so 

 conspicuous. An Advisory Council of Scientific and In- 

 dustrial Research was set up by the British Government in 

 1915, and one million pounds was appropriated for the pro- 

 motion of research in science and the arts. In the face of 

 rapidly rising wages and mounting costs of raw materials, it 

 was seen that the most direct of all possible attacks upon the 

 high cost of living might be made through the agency of re- 

 search. The cost of electric illumination, for example, will be 

 still higher than it is to-day unless existing methods of gen- 

 erating and using the current can be improved. Thus the re- 

 cent production of an incandescent lamp, which yields equal 

 light with a fraction of the current, is a most important step in 



