ere
possibility created by the imagination, for our economic history
contains instance after instance of the purposeful undermining and
destruction of our industries in finer chemicals, dyes and drugs by
foreign interests bent on preserving their monopoly. If one recalls that
through control, for instance, of dyes by a competing nation, control is
in fact also established over products, valued in the hundreds of
millions of dollars, in which dyes enter as an essential factor, one
may realize indeed the tremendous industrial and commercial power which
is controlled by the single lever--chemical dyes. Of even more vital
moment is chemistry in the domain of health: the pitiful calls of our
hospitals for local anesthetics to alleviate suffering on the operating
table, the frantic appeals for the hypnotic that soothes the epileptic
and staves off his seizure, the almost furious demands for remedy after
remedy, that came in the early years of the war, are still ringing in
the hearts of many of us. No wonder that our small army of chemists is
grimly determined not to give up the independence in chemistry which war
has achieved for us! Only a widely enlightened public, however, can
insure the permanence of what farseeing men have started to accomplish
in developing the power of chemistry through research in every domain
which chemistry touches.

The general public should realize that in the support of great chemical
research laboratories of universities and technical schools it will be
sustaining important centers from which the science which improves
products, abolishes waste, establishes new industries and preserves
life, may reach out helpfully into all the activities of our great
nation, that are dependent on the transformation of matter.

The public is to be congratulated upon the fact that the writer of the
present volume is better qualified than any other man in the country to
bring home to his readers some of the great results of modern chemical
activity as well as some of the big problems which must continue to
engage the attention of our chemists. Dr. Slosson has indeed the unique
quality of combining an exact and intimate knowledge of chemistry with
the exquisite clarity and pointedness of expression of a born writer.

We have here an exposition by a master mind, an exposition shorn of the
terrifying and obscuring technicalities of the lecture room, that will
be as absorbing reading as any thrilling romance. For th