and the United States commercial and industrial
forces were being mobilized, that America could make enough almost
unbelievably powerful explosives to blow Germany off the face of the
European map, were it possible to transport the dangerous materials.
Dozens of new explosive compounds were placed before the Government for
consideration and in application for patents. One of the new ones, it
was said, was so powerful that little more than a pinch of it exploded
beneath such an immense structure as the Woolworth Building, New York,
would destroy the entire edifice.

The curtailment of the supply of cotton to Germany when the war started,
because of England's blockade, and later when America entered the
conflict, threatened disaster to the "Fatherland." The German chemists
began working immediately to supply substitutes for cotton, to be used
both in the manufacture of explosives and fabrics. They developed the
processes of producing cellulose from wood pulp to take the place of
cotton for making guncotton, and certain forms of wood fiber and paper
were used in the textile trades. Willow bark was one of the substances
utilized to a limited degree in making fabrics.

Likewise synthetic--or artificial--camphor to take the place of that
secured from nature's own laboratory--the camphor tree--was also
produced of necessity, for camphor is an ingredient largely used in
making smokeless powder. Before the war most of the camphor was obtained
from Japan.

Compounds--alloyed steel, iron and aluminum--have also been used in the
industrial world to supplant copper. In America we have been educated to
regard copper as the ideal metal for conducting electrical power, but in
Europe aluminum was used successfully in a large way, even before the
war. After the conflict started in all of the countries where there was
a scant supply of copper, substitutes were developed by the
metallurgists and chemists.

POTENCY OF MODERN CHEMISTRY.

The acids and salts used in powder making and the creation of explosives
were also secured from new places. Nitric acid, which is necessary to
the manufacture of guncotton, for many years was made principally with
saltpeter and sulphuric acid. Modern chemists, however, made it from
nitrogen of the very air we breathe, and in Germany it was made during
the war from ammonia and calcium cyanamide, both of which may be
obtained from the air.

Many such methods of obtaining acids were known and tested be