l these are his
contributions to the war's equipment, but he also is the magician who
waves the wand and out of the apparently useless weeds and vegetable
matter produces edibles. He turns waste products into valuable chemicals
or extracts needed chemicals from by-products.

GERMANY'S GREAT PRIVATION.

Germany, deprived of many imports by the sea power of England, first
transformed herself into a self-supporting nation through the agency of
the chemist. Substitutes had to be provided for food products which the
Germans could not get, and it is said that the ability of the Kaiser and
his henchmen to withstand the attacks of the Allied forces was due as
much to the service rendered by the chemists as by the army and navy.

Not only were artificial foodstuffs manufactured, but natural food
products previously neglected were prepared for use. What had been
regarded as useless weeds were found to possess food value. A dozen
wild-growing plants were found that might be used as a substitute for
spinach, while half a dozen others were shown to be good substitutes for
salads. Starches were obtained from roots, and cheap grades of oils and
fatty wastes of all sorts were turned into edibles.

Up until the advent of the present war cotton formed the base of most of
the so-called propellant explosives used in advanced warfare. Such
terrible explosives as trinitrotoluene occasionally mentioned in the
published war reports, as well as many others, have as the principal
agent of destructive force guncotton, which is ordinary raw cotton or
cellulose treated with nitric or sulphuric acid, though there are, of
course, other chemicals used in compounding the various forms of deadly
explosives.

At the same time there are innumerable explosives which are of a
distinct class. Lyddite, mentioned occasionally as one of the modern
death-dealing explosives, has for a base picric acid. The Lyddite shells
referred to occasionally in various articles about the war are shells in
which Lyddite is used as the explosive. The largest percentage of
explosives used in modern gunnery are those formed of nitrated
cellulose--guncotton.

TWO GREAT FACTORS.

Therefore any shortage in the supply of cotton and cellulose is a
serious matter in war time, for the country which has the most plentiful
supply of ammunition is the one that has the greatest relative
advantage. It was, for instance, stated from Washington several times
after the war started