October 5, 1917] 



SCIENCE 



323 



great basic chemical industries have suc- 

 cessfully risen to the demands of a situa- 

 tion unparalleled in its scope and urgency. 

 There have been times of delay and times of 

 worry, but the few failures have been due 

 rather to financial difficulties than to a 

 breakdown in scientific efficiency. To those 

 of us who know that the chemist is the final 

 controlling mind, guiding in safety for the 

 fiuancier these vast undertakings and ex- 

 pansions, the record of these years is truly 

 a wonderfully satisfactory response to the 

 first crucial test of the efficiency of chemis- 

 try in America. 



And this result justifies the faith that we 

 will win out just as surely in the hundreds 

 of newer problems brought to us by our 

 own participation in the war. Some of 

 these problems have been brought to the at- 

 tention of our members by the chairman of 

 the two chief chemistry committees, which 

 are cooperating with the government — Dr. 

 "W. H. Nichols, chairman of the committee 

 on chemistry of the National Defense 

 Council, an industrial committee, and by 

 Dr. M. T. Bogert, chairman of the chemis- 

 trj' committee of the National Research 

 Council, a research committee. From San 

 Francisco to Boston, from Minnesota to 

 Texas, our chemists have shown the all- 

 pervading desire to bring to the immediate 

 practical assistance of our country every 

 ounce of our strength and every grain of 

 our intelligence, and have stepped into line 

 for service not only with splendid enthusi- 

 asm, but still better, with the grim deter- 

 mination of purposeful men, who know well 

 our enemies' strength, but who will do our 

 share to eliminate, effectively, unscrupu- 

 lous militarism from the polities of the 

 world ! The immediate response to the 

 tender of the services of our membership to 

 the President of the United States and of 

 the organization of the members for such 

 service through a census of chemists has 

 been an increase in our membership from 



a total of some 8,000 to 10,500, an unprece- 

 dented growth, which shows unequivocally 

 that the chemists of the United States are 

 of one mind in ranging themselves on the 

 side of organized, whole-hearted and force- 

 ful support of oux government in this war ! 

 Indeed, one of our chief difficulties has 

 been to restrain our men in their eagerness 

 until proper organization would enable the 

 central committees to designate to each 

 man the field in which he could serve best. 

 To the impatient chemists, waiting for 

 their "marching orders" it may have ap- 

 peared that invaluable time has been wasted 

 and that progress even now is all too slow. 

 But work on all the most important prob- 

 lems really was quickly organized and al- 

 ready important results are available. As 

 an illustration of this fact we have the 

 brilliant and speedy success of Dr. Day and 

 his collaborators in producing optical glass, 

 so much needed for range-finders, which 

 will bring our shots home to the enemy. 

 The very nature of most of the problems 

 makes it impossible to name them here, but 

 I may say that improvements in explosives, 

 multiplication of the sources of supply 

 from which to manufacture explosives, in- 

 cluding the utilization of the atmospheric 

 nitrogen for the production of nitric acid, 

 providing protection for our soldiers and 

 sailors against poisonous gases, the ma- 

 king of chemicals for which we have 

 hitherto been dependent on importations, 

 these are some of the problems on which 

 manj' of our ablest chemists have been 

 working with all the power and concentra- 

 tion that the occasion demands. I maj^ be 

 more explicit in regard to the problem of 

 the home manufacture of so-called syn- 

 thetic remedies, for the supplies of which 

 up to the present time we have turned to 

 our present enemies. "We need large sup- 

 plies of salvarsan for our hospitals and 

 for our armies, we need local anesthetics, 

 substitutes for cocaine, for our surgeons, 



