SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 
chemical manufacture made many difficulties for England, and the 
story of toluene supply for T.N.T. manufacture is specially to the 
point. - ‘<a 
‘At the outset of the war our toluene supply was small, and came 
from the few gas-works and coke ovens which were fitted with recovery 
and refining plants. At a later stage the greater part of the toluene 
used was derived from a channel that before the war had fed the Ger- 
man industries. For many years there had been at Rotterdam a 
distillation plant for extracting toluene from Dutch East Indies petro- 
leum, and quite early in the war the British Government acquired that _ 
plant, moved it to England, diverted the petroleum, and for some time 
mainly depended on this source for toluene. Welcome as was this 
supply, it was all too small to meet the increasing demands of war, and, 
at a later stage, the situation was only met by the extension of recovery 
methods to virtually all the gasworks and coke ovens in Britain. We 
were then, in this respect, in the position that Germany held at the 
opening of the war. 
In July, 1915, the sites of the two factories were undisturbed fields. In 
December, 1916, within eighteen months of the start, the Gretna factory 
had produced 5,000 tons of cordite, and the Queensferry factory had 
made somewhat similar progress, though its full development had to 
await the supply of toluene. To the armies in the field, the eighteen 
months must have been a weary wait, but, viewed from another aspect, 
those eighteen months have significance. In that short time the indus- 
trial community of Britain transformed supplies, labour, and knowledge 
into war material, and to such purpose as must have surprised the 
Germans, who were by no means sluggards. ‘We can be quite certain 
that the lesson has not passed unheeded by other industrial communities. 
What man has done, man can do, and when such nations as America, 
Britain, and Japan talk about disarmament, it only means that it suits 
them at the moment to stop locking up money and effort in the non- 
productive shape of warships and guns. It does not mean that they 
are disarmed, for an industrially developed nation cannot be disarmed, 
Exact knowledge of munition production, a nucleus of skilled workers, 
supplies, and then within a few months a nation is transformed. So 
much we can learn from the story of Gretna and Queensferry. Nor 
does such change involve immense personnel, for, in looking back at the 
history of most of the great war factories of England, one sees a leaven 
of research and exact knowledge, an army of unskilled workers—mostly 
women—not so numerous, but filled with patriotism and a passionate 
devotion to their men in France. Those qualities are not peculiar to 
the men and women of Britain, and are psychological factors that must 
be taken into account when calculating what other nations could do. 
Disarmament, in its obvious sense, will not necessarily turn Britain 
into a mere shopkeeper with his teeth drawn; the power to retain u 
strong position in the world depends ultimately, not on the possession 
at any moment of the ships, engines, and munitions of war, but on the 
extent and’variety of the nation’s industries and’ the possession of 
knowledge to apply thé resources of the industries quickly and 
effectively to the problems of war. Danger lies-in the fact ‘that otliet 
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