34 
IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCE Voi,. XXVIII, 1921 
the time of the great war itself. It is in this age that we must 
live and move and have our being. 
The world at large and more particularly Europe, is stagger- 
ing from the eifect of the cruel blows it received in the World 
War, and we have come to realize that recovery can not be rapid, 
but will require a generation or two, and possibly even a longer 
time. 
Where will the world’s bright young men and women, fired with 
a lofty ambition to succeed in life, seek an education in the next 
decades? Egypt, Greece, Rome, France, the Florentine Republic, 
England, and lastly Germany, have each had their day as the cen- 
ter or metropolis of the world’s intellectual life. ^And quite likely 
Germany surpassed them all in pushing forward the frontiers in 
almost every field of knowledge. Reliable statistics have shown 
that for some decades prior to the fated August 1, 1914, fifty-five 
per cent of all the advanced or productive scholarship was con- 
fined within the borders of the German Empire ; while all the rest 
of the world — the United States, England, Belgium, France, Ja- 
pan, Italy and all the others had to be content with the remaining 
forty-five per cent. 
But Germany is bleeding and prostrate from the long and ter- 
rible war. Many of her brightest and most promising scientific 
men and productive scholars made the supreme sacrifice on the 
field of battle. Her finances are in ruins. We had occasion to 
send a dollar and a half to Heidelberg last week. Ordinarily six 
marks would have been purchased but now it requires ninety-one 
marks to equal the American money. Belgium has made rapid 
progress in reconstruction, but yesterday as we paid a bill in Ant- 
werp, only seven and a half American cents could purchase a 
Belgian franc. Germany in common with the other nations ruined 
by the war must engage in a fierce struggle for existence to ward 
off under-nourishment and starvation, and history shows that 
under such circumstances, there is small opportunity to consider 
the productive scholarship that adds to the world’s knowledge. 
For possible decades in the future the children will continue under- 
nourished and many will be deprived of even the rudiments of an 
education. 
The countless millions of dollars worth of high explosives that 
were used in the war can be produced only by the free use of nitric 
and sulphuric acids. Of course we all understand that nitric acid 
in the form of nitrates is an important fertilizing material, of which 
vegetation has been deprived; and sulphuric acid is required to 
