Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 88.djvu/442

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��Popular Science Monthly

��gxxncotton cake from the top, the water are not only able to make all the nitro

��beig forced down ahead of the alcohol until it is driven entirely out at the bot- tom, and alcohol takes the place of the water.

This is called the replacement process, and was discovered by Francis G. du Pont. It is very important.

Making cotton contraband of war does not prevent the Germans from making guncotton from other materials. When wood fiber or fiber oljtained from grass

���Cotton nitrated and ready to be transformed into smokeless powder (nitrocellulose). Grains of smoke- less powder (nitrocellulose) are per- forated so that they can bum inside as well as outside, thus controlling the rate of gas production

��is treated with nitric acid it also becomes a kind of gtmcotton. The German chem- ists are very well able to make their gun- cotton, and consequently their gunpow- der and high explosives, from the trees of the forest.

But nitric acid also is contraband of war. How then are the Germans to get their nitric acid?

Before the outbreak of the European \\^ar the Germans had anticipated the present blockade and prepared for it. The German chemists and scientists had developed a very practical, very efficient and cheap method of producing nitro compounds from th'e air, nitric acid among them, by means of the electric current.

I understand that todav the Germans

��compounds they need for the purposes of explosives, both high explosives and smokeless powder, but also what they require for fertilizers for the farmers.

With a nation of scientists, chemists and inventors like the Germans, it is entirely impossible to stop them from producing explosives in any quantity they may desire, entirely independent of any class of imported materials, because although the English may blockade the seas they cannot establish a blockade between the genius of the German scientists and the German govern- ment.

It is very curious how the trials

of war often result in the most

beneficial effects upon a nation.

When the English established

A their famous blockade under their

���Continental system in Napoleon's time, the French were compelled to resort to some other means than importation to get their sugar. Consequently, they de- veloped the sugar beet, and planted it in enormous quantities, with the result, that France introduced the sugar beet in- dustry, which has been of vast im- portance to that nation ever since.

Likewise, the English blockade against Germany today is compelling the Ger- mans to develop their internal industries in a most phenomenal way. They have solved the nitric acid problem, and very likely they will continue, after the war is over, to make their nitric acid and other nitro compounds from air. What is more, they will probably compete suc- cessfullv with the natural nitrate of Chile.

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