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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXVIII. No. 728 



unliberal as to forbid him to talk about 

 alcoholic-fermentation industries because 

 the Prohibition Party thinks alcohol ought 

 not to exist ; it would be as if a paper on 

 the uses of saccharine was objected to by 

 the Pure Food Law advocates or as if a 

 discussion on the therapeutic value of 

 chemicals was distasteful to the followers 

 of Mrs. Eddy; it would be as unwarranted 

 as if, in a geological society, a paper was 

 considered as objectionable because it con- 

 tained statements contrary to the text of 

 the Bible. 



The chemistry of explosives has always 

 been narrowly connected with the so-called 

 art of war, and it is almost impossible to 

 talk broadly on one subject, without touch- 

 ing upon the other. 



I admit, I consider this a very unfortu- 

 nate attitude of mind, a sign of the yet 

 very incomplete development of the human 

 race; yet, to the average man, this attitude 

 is predominant. For too many generations 

 our race has been perverted by a per- 

 nicious education where writers and 

 artists have glorified and misrepresented 

 war. We are all laboring under the harm 

 which has been done by the so-called 

 classic writers of antiquity whom I shall 

 take the liberty of calling here the "brag- 

 garts" of antiquity, for they it M'ere who, 

 in their bombastic rhyme and prose, made 

 so much out of a little scrimmage between 

 a handful of excited fighters, as to make 

 it appear as a feat worthy of the gods. 

 As long as the plastic little brains of our 

 children are influenced by this class of 

 literature, so long will explosives and war 

 go together. Men like Grant, Sherman, 

 Tolstoi, Verestschagin, men who have par- 

 ticipated in the horrors of war, do not 

 •talk nor write, nor paint the glorification 

 of war. 



If I kill a man and take what he has 

 and what he was not willing to give me. 



you will call it murder and theft, but if 

 some people kill and rob under association 

 rules, they will call it war and conquest. 

 There was a time when agriculture, in- 

 dustry and commerce were considered of 

 very scant importance, because it was so 

 much easier to get rich by conquering 

 other nations and return triumphantly 

 home, laden with plunder and stained with 

 blood, but greeted with the applause of 

 young and old. The Romans and the 

 Greeks and even the armies of Napoleon 

 knew very well how to play this game 

 successfully. I am glad to say that since 

 those times we have made some little 

 progress. Wars are no longer remunera- 

 tive except to army contractors and news- 

 papers. Statistics show that nowadays it 

 costs every warring nation about one mil- 

 lion a day to keep an army in the field. 

 Even then the results for the victor are 

 about as disastrous as in a successful 

 patent lawsuit where patentee and in- 

 fringer both lose money after they have 

 paid for attorneys and chemical experts. 

 The financial crisis in Germany after the 

 Franco-Prussian war, the present poverty 

 of Japan after two successful wars, are 

 striking instances of all this. 



Nowadays people who want to get very 

 rich have surer ways than those of plun- 

 der by war: law -makers and lawyers have 

 given them easier opportunities for plun- 

 dering their fellow-men by the skillful 

 use of so-called "business methods" and 

 so-called "honesty" as defined by law. 

 Sure enough, in the midst of all this live 

 some dreamers who in their visions of the 

 future behold the disappearance of war. I 

 admit I count myself amongst these vision- 

 aries, these cranks, these unorthodox, un- 

 respectable people, although I fear that 

 our dreams are still far from complete 

 realization. Nevertheless, the fact that 

 some people dare dream such dreams and 



