Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights

by Kelly Miller

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 before the war, but the processes had not been perfected to such an extent as to make them commercially profitable. However, the increased prices of chemicals, due to the excessive demands of war, and the absolute necessity for producing them inspired the chemists to get the required results, and Germany by the development of these sources of supply found the acids necessary for her own use in war, whether for explosive making or medical purposes.

Great quantities of sugar are used in making powder and explosives, too, and when the supply became limited the German chemists began producing in larger quantities the chemical substitute—saccharine. Later even this sweet was denied the population because the chemicals were needed for war uses. So in every line Germany found use for everything which its chemists and chemical laboratories could produce.

The terrible gas and liquid fire bombs which the Germans were first reported using contained chemical compounds invented for the purpose by the chemists. Some of the chemicals and the gases produced when the bombs exploded were so powerful that men and animals in the range of the fumes were killed instantly. The effect was to paralyze them in some cases and it was reported that many of the soldiers were found dead standing upright in the trenches or in the attitudes which they had assumed at the moment they were overcome.

BASIC PRINCIPLE OF BOMBS.

Nitrous-oxide, or chlorine, in some chemical form is supposed to have been the base of the bombs, and concerning the liquid fire it was reported in connection with the dropping of bombs on London from a Zeppelin, that some of the bombs contained what is chemically known as Thermit, which is a mixture of aluminum and iron oxide used in brazing and welding. When ignited the oxygen is freed from the iron and combines with the aluminum with great rapidity. During the chemical reaction an intense heat is produced—a heat so great that it almost equals that of an electric arc.

So in the world of agriculture and industry the German chemists, recognized leaders of the world, actually made or produced from the air and other unsuspected sources things without which they could not have withstood the siege against them for a single year. In the absence of concentrated foods for cattle and humans, the chemists produced absolute substitutes. They took the residue or waste from the breweries and extracting the bitter hops taste from the dried yeast produced a substitute for beef extract.