THE IMPERIAL ASPECTS OF CHEMICAL SCIENCE. 
we were content to allow-ten-elevenths of the world’s demand for 
quinine to be produced in the island of Java; this material can be 
easily grown in several of our colonies. <A large army suffers more 
loss from a shortage of quinine than from military operations. Should 
war catch us again without a reserve of a hundred tons of quinine actually 
among our military stores it should be regarded as criminal neglect. 
Similarly, our Empire has been content to draw most of its bromine 
from Germany; since bromine and bromides are necessary in medicine 
and in manutactures, the stoppage of imports led to considerable em- 
barrassment. We can probably produce bromine more cheaply than 
Germany from the residues left in the production of salt from sea- 
water on the Indian coasts. 
It must not be concluded that reflections such as these upon our past 
policy are of the nature of mere carping criticism. We have all 
received a very intensive education since the autumn of 1914; there is 
no merit in being wise after the event, but it is very essential that the 
lessons administered should profit us in the future. A consistent dis- 
regard of the Imperial aspects of chemical science previous. to the war 
cost us hundreds of thousands of valuable lives during the war, and . 
has post-war consequences which will influence our general prosperity 
adversely for some indefinite period yet to come. 
It is noteworthy that the chemical works in Germany, the creation 
of the last fifty years, are capable of providing between them a con- 
siderable proportion of the world’s requirements of chemical products 
of every kind, from the most inexpensive chemical substances right 
through a long series to the most costly, because the most difficult to 
manufacture, of the fine chemicals possessing any technical importance. 
Furthermore, the German chemical firms are all affiliated under one 
great central control, the object of which is to protect and advance the 
collective technical chemical interests of the nation. The United King- 
dom has always been the seat of a flourishing chemical industry, which, 
however, only embraces certain sections of technical chemistry; many 
of our great chemical firms are at least as efficient as any on the 
eontinent, but, whilst our manufacturing industry has specialized upon 
more or less isolated patches of the great subject of chemical technology, 
we have been content to rely upon the German works for many expen- 
sive, but absolutely essential, chemical products. Further, the British 
chemical works have not. co-operated in the establishment of a com- 
prehensive organization for mutual protection; some may question 
whether such a union is in the interests of the nation, but the important 
point for the moment is that we have had no such co-operative system 
of working. 
With these essential differences between German and British. practice 
in mind, the immediate effect of a declaration of war can be realized. 
In Germany, mobilization meant the cessation of peace production and 
the concentration of effort on war production under the auspices of a 
central control well acquainted with the potentialities of each com- 
ponent factory; the type of organization existing lent itself to rapid 
and efficient production on a war footing. The autumn of 1914 found 
Great Britain with a chemical industry which had never produced a 
large number of chemical materials needed for military consumption 
415 
