Imitation tea is made of plum and other leaves boiled in real tea and dried.
To turn to substitutes other than food, it will be recalled that Germany very early began to popularise the use of benzol as an alternative to petrol for motor engines. This was a natural outgrowth of her marvellously developed coal-tar industry, of which benzol is a product. Prizes for the most effective benzol-consuming engine, for benzol carburettors, etc., have been offered by various official departments in recent years, and I am told that during the war ingenious inventions for the more satisfactory employment of benzol have been adopted. Owing to the increased use of potatoes as food, the alcoholic extract from them, always a great German and Austro-Hungarian industry, has had to be restricted.
It is an ill wind that blows nobody good, as I learned from the owner of a little general shop in a Brandenburg village. He told me that about twenty-five years ago, when kerosene became widely used in the village for illuminating purposes, he was left with a tremendous supply of candles which he could never sell. The oil famine has caused the substitution of candle light for lamp light during the war, and has enabled him to sell out the whole stock at inflated prices. All oils are at a premium. The price of castor-oil has risen fivefold in Germany, chiefly owing to the fact that it is being extensively used for aeroplane and other lubrication purposes.
But it is oil from which explosives are derived that chiefly interests Germany. Almost any kind of fruit stone contains glycerine. That is why notices have been put on all trains which run through fruit districts, such as Werder, near Berlin, and Baden, advising the people to save their fruit stones and bring them to special depots for collection.
Five pounds of fat treated with caustic soda can be made to yield one pound of glycerine. This is one reason, in addition to the British blockade, which causes the great fat shortage among the civil population.
Glycerine united with ammonium nitrate is used in the manufacture of explosives. Deprived of nitrogenous material from South America, Germany has greatly developed the process for the manufacture of artificial nitrates. She spent 25,000,000 pounds after the outbreak of war to enable her chemists and engineers to turn out a sufficient amount of nitric acid.
Toluol, a very important ingredient of explosives, is obtained from coal-tar, which Germany is naturally able to manufacture at present better than any other country in the world, since she bad practically a monopoly in coal-tar products before hostilities commenced.
Evidently, however, substitutes to reinforce goods smuggled through the blockade have not sufficed to meet the chemical demands of the German Government, for great flaming placards were posted up all over the Empire announcing the commandeering of such commodities as sulphur, sulphuric acid, toluol, saltpetre, and the like.
Germany long ago claimed to have perfected woodpulp as a substitute for cotton in propulsive ammunition. She made this claim very early, however, for the purpose of hoodwinking British blockade advocates. Her great need eventually led her to take steps to induce the United States to insist on the Entente Powers raising the blockade on cotton. She went to great trouble and expense to send samples by special means to her agents in America.
The cotton shortage began to be seriously felt early in 1916 in the manufacturing districts of Saxony, where so many operatives were suddenly thrown out of work that the Government had to set aside a special fund for their temporary relief, until they could be transferred to other war industries.