112 GERMAN SCIENCE 
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began to manufacture artificial indigo, she imported the natural 
product to the value of £635,000, In 1911 the import had 
fallen to £22,000, i.e. #5, whilst in 1912 Germany exported 
her artificial indigo to the value of over £2,000,000, I need 
hardly say that throughout all this time there have been 
plenty of voices, especially in this country, declaring that 
artificial indigo could never equal and never replace the 
‘good old-fashioned’ natural product, and that our appre- 
hensions about a great industry in our Indian dependency 
were quite uncalled for, These people are now faced by facts 
that could have been foreseen by any intelligent student of 
the past. 
It is not unusual to hear the coal-tar industry referred to as 
if it only related to the manufacture of dyes. This, however, 
is a great mistake. It has gathered round it a great variety 
of collateral manufactures of the utmost importance to phar- 
macy, agriculture, photography, and many other practical 
arts. It is-a sort of central region of enterprise for a host of 
scientific industries and comprises a standing army of industrial 
pioneers armed with the finest weapons that science can forge. 
I think there can be no doubt that the development of the 
coal-tar industries in Germany has had a far-reaching effect 
on the national attitude towards science, and particularly in 
this respect—that it formed a gigantic object lesson as to the 
industrial value of what is called pure science. It must be 
remembered that the chemists from whose researches these 
great industries arose were in the first instance men working 
at scientific investigation in a perfectly disinterested way ; 
they were such men as might fitly be described by terms, 
which in the mouths of unsympathetic practical men are often 
1 This statement has of course been literally verified during the war, for 
it has been in these works that the Germans have improvised their manu- 
facture of explosives under blockade and have elaborated the manufacture 
of poison gas. 
