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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol XLIII. No. 1120 



foresightednes* to the extent that such 

 Americans can see only the chemical devel- 

 ments abroad. 



I hope I have made it clear that it is the 

 abuse of a privilege against which I speak, 

 and not against individuals, for we do not 

 let such personal attacks affect our regard 

 for individual Germans any more than we 

 allow our opinions on the history of the 

 past two years to affect this regard for such 

 individuals. Every one of us know Ger- 

 mans who are the most whole-souled and 

 kindly men — who we are grateful to know 

 and who scorn to be guilty of, or to take ad- 

 vantage of, such chauvinism. Such depreci- 

 ations of American efforts will bury them- 

 selves, without any assistance from us, and 

 I only emphasize them here to call attention 

 of teachers of chemistry to the fact that we 

 owe protection to the business community 

 and the public against such misrepresenta- 

 tion. "We should never cease our apprecia- 

 tion of foreign chemists of whatever nation, 

 but in addition it is our duty first to in- 

 form ourselves and then our students upon 

 what our own chemists have done to solve 

 our problems in this country. "We have 

 been able to blame our shirking this duty 

 in the past upon the fact that it was easy 

 to get information about foreign chemical 

 achievement and no one seemed anxious to 

 give publicity to American development. 

 "We as teachers have certainly done little to 

 remedy this condition. The American 

 Chemical Society, however, has spread the 

 results of American effort before us and 

 made them accessible in its Journal of In- 

 dustrial and Engineering Chemistry for 

 the last two years, in the shape of a series 

 of addresses on the chemist's contributions 

 to American industries. There are other 

 addresses in these same volumes profoundly 

 informing along these lines and this is par- 

 ticularly true of the Perkin Medal ad- 

 dresses each year in the same journal. In 

 addition Professor S. P. Sadtler in the 



American Journal of Pharmacy for Octo- 

 ber, 1915 (an address before the National 

 Exposition of Chemical Industries) , in giv- 

 ing popular information along this line 

 limits himself entirely to chemical indus- 

 tries originated as well as developed by 

 American chemists, and Edgar F. Smith's 

 "History of Chemistry in America," but 

 recently issued, should be read by every 

 student of chemistry. 



None of this work is in any sense a vain- 

 glorious adulation of the chemist as some 

 superbeing nor is it an attempt to compete 

 in the questionable game of lauding one 

 nationality above another. It is merely a 

 matter of a belated form of education 

 which our universities and chemists hitherto 

 have largely denied to the American busi- 

 ness man, and which he has a right to ex- 

 pect of them. The record is one for which 

 we have good reason to be thankful and, as 

 we teachers no longer have the excuse of 

 ignorance about American progress, we are 

 at fault if the rising generation has not an 

 appreciation of the progress of chemistry in 

 America, commensurate with the high level 

 of its development. 



In conclusion then, let us take courage 

 from the fact that though much damage has 

 been done to us and our industries by the 

 war, our efforts at salvage benefit us as 

 experience, power and preparedness. "We 

 have seen that the chemists of America have 

 met the war situation well and do not re- 

 quire defense at the hands of any one. It 

 becomes increasingly evident that business 

 is awakened to the value of chemistry as a 

 source of power and wealth as business has 

 never had occasion or opportunity to be 

 hitherto. Let us hope also that not only the 

 spectators, but also all the combatants may 

 learn, even if impelled by bitter war's ex- 

 perience, to appreciate the worth, each of 

 the other, and that all nations are "made of 

 one blood to dwell on the face of the earth. ' ' 



James R. "Witheow 



