138 THE NEW WORLD OF SCIENCE 



At the outbreak of the war in 1914, explosives occupied an 

 almost unique position among the materials which became of 

 military importance for an enormous number of them were 

 known, a large number of them had been manufactured and 

 used so that the methods of manufacture and use had been 

 commercially developed. Because of this, and the fact that 

 for more than a century they had been the subject of numerous 

 scientific investigations, their characteristics were pretty well 

 ascertained. Since the war was evidently to be of great mag- 

 nitude and prolonged, the problem with regard to explosives 

 was the selection from among the many known of those which, 

 while offering a large measure of safety to the manufacturer 

 and user, would prove the most effective against the enemy, 

 and could be rapidly manufactured and delivered. As a result, 

 TNT and picric acid were the chief explosives used as burst- 

 ing agents, and smokeless powder, either single base (nitro 

 cellulose only), or double base (nitro cellulose-nitroglycerin) 

 as the propellents, with mercury fulminate and chlorate mix- 

 tures as initiating agents and tetryl or tetranitroaniline as 

 boosters. Black gunpowder played a subsidiary part as used 

 in trench mortars and pyrotechnic devices, while cheddites, 

 ammonals, nitrostarch compositions and similar explosives were 

 used in hand grenades and bombs. Guncotton* which would 

 have been more efficiently used in propellents, was employed 

 to some extent in defense mines and limited quantities of ex- 

 plosives such as ecrastic, schneiderite or explosive D were used 

 because of a special penchant of certain services. 



In view of this there should be nothing surprising in the 

 statement that the explosives art and industry was in such a 

 condition of development and preparedness at the outbreak of 

 '* The World War for Civilization " that no new explosive 

 compound nor any new principle in application appears to h:ye 

 been evolved or made use of during this war. It is true that 

 the enemy, to piece out its requirements, made use of hexa- 

 nitrodiphenylamine (long used as a dye under such names 

 as Aurantia, Kaiser Yellow and others) and of hexanitrodi- 



