our market is the oil of
the soya or soy bean. In 1918 we imported over 300,000,000 pounds of
soy-bean oil, mostly from Manchuria. The oil is used in manufacture of
substitutes for butter, lard, cheese, milk and cream, as well as for
soap and paint. The soy-bean can be raised in the United States wherever
corn can be grown and provides provender for man and beast. The soy meal
left after the extraction of the oil makes a good cattle food and the
fermented juice affords the shoya sauce made familiar to us through the
popularity of the chop-suey restaurants.

As meat and dairy products become scarcer and dearer we shall become
increasingly dependent upon the vegetable fats. We should therefore
devise means of saving what we now throw away, raise as much as we can
under our own flag, keep open avenues for our foreign supply and
encourage our cooks to make use of the new products invented by our
chemists.

CHAPTER XII

FIGHTING WITH FUMES

The Germans opened the war using projectiles seventeen inches in
diameter. They closed it using projectiles one one-hundred millionth of
an inch in diameter. And the latter were more effective than the former.
As the dimensions were reduced from molar to molecular the battle became
more intense. For when the Big Bertha had shot its bolt, that was the
end of it. Whomever it hit was hurt, but after that the steel fragments
of the shell lay on the ground harmless and inert. The men in the
dugouts could hear the shells whistle overhead without alarm. But the
poison gas could penetrate where the rifle ball could not. The malignant
molecules seemed to search out their victims. They crept through the
crevices of the subterranean shelters. They hunted for the pinholes in
the face masks. They lay in wait for days in the trenches for the
soldiers' return as a cat watches at the hole of a mouse. The cannon
ball could be seen and heard. The poison gas was invisible and
inaudible, and sometimes even the chemical sense which nature has given
man for his protection, the sense of smell, failed to give warning of
the approach of the foe.

The smaller the matter that man can deal with the more he can get out of
it. So long as man was dependent for power upon wind and water his
working capacity was very limited. But as soon as he passed over the
border line from physics into chemistry and learned how to use the
molecule, his efficiency in work and warfare was multiplied manifold.
The molecula