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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XL VI. No. 1188 



chemistry in the United States, with spe- 

 cial reference to the resources of chemis- 

 try in the nation's service in war and in 

 peace, as seen from the point of view both 

 of chemical industry and of universities 

 and colleges, the sources from which our 

 chemists and our chemical lore are derived. 

 The great European war and now our 

 own entry into the world struggle of free 

 democracies against the organized military 

 power of the last strongholds of feudal 

 privilege in western civilization have 

 brought home to the public as never before 

 in the history of the world the vital place 

 which chemistry occupies in the life of na- 

 tions. What is it, indeed, that is so funda- 

 mental in this science that a country's very 

 existence in times of great emergencies and 

 its prosperity at any time may depend on 

 its master minds in chemistry? It is the 

 fact, summed up in the fewest possible 

 words, that chemistry is the science of the 

 transformation of matter. Since every 

 phase of our existence is bound up with 

 matter, from our birth to our return to 

 dust, we find at every turn in life that 

 chemistry is in demand to aid man in his 

 effort to assure to himself a safe, scientific 

 control in the supplying of his own needs, 

 where nature, from time immemorial, has 

 shown the same impersonal indifference as 

 to his wants, his survival or destruction, 

 that she has for every other form of life! 

 From the transformation of our raw ores 

 into finished metals of almost any conceiv- 

 able quality and application, to the trans- 

 formation of rocks and salts and the gases 

 of our atmosphere into nourishing foods, 

 from the transformation of the yield of our 

 peaceful cotton fields and rich coal depos- 

 its into death-dealing explosives, to the 

 preparation of blessed life-saving medica- 

 ments from the same crude sources — to 

 mention only a few instances of the trans- 

 formation of matter that I have in mind — 

 it is chemistry that is giving us the power 



to satisfy our needs, whether it be for wise 

 and beneficent purposes or for the fulfil- 

 ment of our more baneful desires. 



The crisis of the war has put this great 

 controlling science, as it has put all other 

 human agencies, to the fire test in every 

 great country on the face of the earth. 

 Acknowledgedly, chemistry has thus far 

 staved off defeat for Germany after Joffre 

 on the Marne had killed her hopes for a 

 swift, crushing victory through the viola- 

 tion of Belgium, and had taught her that 

 she must face a long struggle, in which, cut 

 off from the world's supplies, she must 

 make shift with what her own territories 

 could yield and her chemists could produce. 

 In the wonderful organization of power in 

 France and in England in the midst of 

 war, the French and English chemists have 

 stepped in and brought their supplies of 

 ■munitions of every variety, of remedies, of 

 their new weapons of defense and offense 

 in poison gas and liquid fire warfare up 

 to the point of meeting now on more than 

 equal terms an enemy prepared years in 

 advance. And in our country too our 

 chemists have stood the ordea;l of an un- 

 precedented time. I have in mind our 

 splendid achievement of having solved in 

 these three years of warfare such tremen- 

 dous problems which these years have 

 brought to us as were involved in the 

 speeding up of the production of thousands 

 and thousands of tons of fundamental 

 chemical products needed by our allies and 

 now for our own purposes — steel and iron 

 alloys of every variety of toughness, hard- 

 ness or elasticity, purified copper by the 

 millions of pounds, aluminium for airships 

 and motor cars, abrasives on which the 

 trueness of every great and every small gun 

 depends, sulphuric acid and alcohol for the 

 preparation of explosives — foods, oils and 

 scores of other essential products prepared 

 on a scale never seen before — I think we 

 may say with justifiable pride that our 



