COM TAR 57 



every lamp-post where gas is burned, because benzol 

 goes up with the flame." He had in mind particularly 

 the impending shortage of gasolene, for which benzol, or 

 benzene as we call it, is a suitable substitute as motor 

 fuel. 



Before the war the British were glad- to sell their sur- 

 plus tar at low price to the Germans who made out of it 

 all sorts of dyes and drugs which they sold back to the 

 British at high prices. The Germans also found the 

 stuff useful for the manufacture of high explosives which 

 however, they were not so anxious to sell abroad but 

 preferred to keep at home for purposes best known to 

 themselves. 



We Americans, too, were neglectful of the explosive 

 possibilities of the coal-tar products. Indeed, there 

 was then a prevalent feeling that war was an anachron- 

 ism and would gradually sink into innocuous desuetude. 

 We Americans have a curious belief that anachronisms 

 die out spontaneously if let alone, whereas history shows 

 that they are very long-lived creatures and rarely die of 

 old age but usually have to be killed off. In 1914 there 

 were only enough by-product coke-ovens in the United 

 States to turn out 700,000 pounds of toluene a month. 

 Toluene is used in wartime for making trinitrotoluene, 

 familiarly known as TNT, but there was not much de- 

 mand for it then, so most of the coke makers let it burn. 

 When America entered the war our Government per- 

 suaded them, more or less imperatively, to put in by- 

 product coke-ovens, and by 1918 they could turn out 

 12,000,000 pounds of toluene a month. 



The Great War differed from all former wars in the 



