Popular Science Monthly 



41 ;> 



If you want to know why cotton is contraband of war this picture will tell you. It 

 shows a Russian mine which ran ashore on the Baltic Sea and which the Germans ex- 

 ploded. As in all modern mines the charge was composed of a high explosive made by the 

 proper chemical treatment of cotton. The war is actually being fought with cotton — 

 cotton grown upon the peaceful southern plantations of the United States, So long as 

 cotton is obtainable these high explosives can be manufactured in great quantities. Nat- 

 urally, the warring countries who can secure unlimited control of the cotton supply make 

 themselves just that much more formidable to their enemies. Great Britain watches with 

 never-closed eyes every shipload of cotton leaving the United States 



You read of "craters" in the newspapers — great holes produced either by the explosion of 

 some huge shell or of some subterranean mine. This is a photograph of a type of crater 

 produced by a mine. Surely the men in this war live on the crests of volcanoes — not figura- 

 tively, but literally. At any moment the soldiers in the trenches may be blown to atoms 

 by mines charged with high explosives made from guncotton. The tremendous expansive 

 power of guncotton when exploded, will lift many million times its own weight of matter, 

 with a suddenness that prevents any possibility of escape for those who are within its rflnge 



