At this point in my narrative I am trying to produce a conspectus of the Nitrogen Area as it was during that period in its career. I leave to the imagination of my readers the task of picturing that gigantic concentration of human effort: the eternal smoke-cloud from a thousand chimney-stalks lying ever between us and the sun; the murky twilight of the streets at noon; the whir of dynamos and the roar of the great electric arcs; the unintermittent thunder of trains pouring coal into the city; and, above all, the half-naked figures in the factories, toiling, toiling, shift after shift in one incessant strain through the four-and-twenty hours. No one can ever depict the details of that panorama.
But alongside this vast outpouring of physical energy there lay another world, calm, orderly and almost silent, yet equally important to the end in view: the world of the scientific experts in their laboratories and research stations. To pass from one region to the other was like a transition from pandemonium to a cloister.
Nordenholt had grouped his experts into three main classes, though of course these groups by no means included all the investigators he controlled. It was here that the Nordenholt Gang were strongest, for the path of the scientific man is one which offered the greatest chances to Nordenholt’s scheme for the furthering of youth.
In the first place came the group of chemists and electricians who were engaged upon the improvement of nitrogen fixation methods; and between this section and the factories there was a constant liaison; so that each new plant which was erected might contain the very latest improvements devised by the experts.
The second group contained the bacteriologists, whose task it was to investigate the habits of B. diazotans, to determine whether it could be exterminated in any practical manner and to discover what methods could be employed to prevent its ravaging the new crops when they were obtainable.
Finally, the experts in agriculture overlapped with the chemical group, since many of the questions before them were concerned with the chemistry of the soil. I have already mentioned how the action of B. diazotans disintegrated the upper strata of the land and reduced the soil to a friable material. This formed one of the most troublesome features in the cultivation problem, since the porosity of the ground allowed water to sink through, and thus plants sown in the affected fields were left without any liquid upon which they could draw for sustenance. It was J. F. Hope, I believe, who finally suggested a solution of the matter. His process consisted in mixing colloid minerals such as clays with the soil and thus forming less permeable beds; and the agricultural experts were able to establish the minimum percentages of clay which were required in order to make crops grow.
I have mentioned these points in order to show how much we in the Area depended upon the pure scientists for help. But it must not be supposed that only those lines of scientific investigation capable of immediate application were kept in view by Nordenholt. I learned later, as I shall tell in its proper place, that he had cast further afield than that.
I cannot give details of the work on the scientific side, because I have no intimate acquaintance with them; but I met the results on every hand in the course of my own department’s affairs. From day to day a new machine would be passed for service and put into operation, some fresh catalyst would be sent down for trial on a large scale after having been tested in the laboratory, or there might be a slight variation in the relative quantities of the ingredients in some of our factory processes. There was a constant touch between research and large-scale operations.
In the course of this I used often to have to visit the Research Section; and in some ways I found it a mental anodyne in my perplexities. These long, airy laboratories, with their spotless cleanliness and delicate apparatus, formed a pleasant contrast to the grimy factories and gigantic machines among which part of my days were passed. And I found that the popular conception of the scientific man as a dry-as-dust creature was strangely wide of the mark. It may be that Nordenholt’s picked men differed from others of their class; but I found in them a directness in speech and a sense of humour which I had not anticipated. After the hurry and confusion of the improvisation which marked the opening of the Nitrogen Area, the quiet certainty of the work in the Research Section seemed like a glimpse of another world. I do not mean that they talked like super-men or that the investigations were always successful; but over it all there was an atmosphere of clockwork precision which somehow gave one confidence. These men, it struck me for the first time, had always been contending with Nature in their struggle to wrest her secrets from her; while we in the other world had been sparring against our fellows with Nature standing above us in the conflict, so great and so remote that we had never understood even that she was there. Now, under the new conditions, all was changed for us; while to these scientific experts it was merely the opening of a fresh field in their long-drawn-out contest.