HIS war, with all its grewsomeness, is forcing us finally to do what no amount of reason and appeal to common sense has ever been able to accomplish. It is a sad fact that suffering, sorrow, fear, and carnage should still be needed to make us think-the great majority of us merely hybrids-half-child, half-savageunwilling to read the open book of wisdom until we get badly hurt. In the meantime we have kept on gnawing and rehearsing through thousands of years the literature and aims of bygone ages. Our race has studied eagerly the philosophy of the ancients, which tried to explain everything with all the artifices of polished rhetoric, fostering much superstition, much prejudice, and all that this implies, and in the meantime not even getting as far in real knowledge as to be able to explain such simple phenomena as rain, wind, or fire, or the cause of contagious diseases, nor to solve even such elementary problems of practical utility as to furnish us means of locomotion beyond what they were at the beginning of the history of the human race. Then, much later, we ceased some of our lip philosophy and attempted to do better by resorting to the cross-examination of nature through direct scientific investigation; this laid bare an unforeseen amount of exact knowledge, an inexhaustible gold-mine, which provided us with means to control the until then most dreaded forces of nature, and to turn them into docile servants for our greater power of action and for greater comfort, revealing new resources for happiness, health, long life. But, some way or another, we cannot forget our time-honored habit of bungling. So we fail to utilize our scientific knowledge for the better aims, and in most cases we have gone much out of the way, taken great pains, to use it for wrong purposes.

Art, too, has had unending opportunities to add her gifts to make this world more agreeable, happier to live in. Then, again, we pride ourselves in the possession of more than one beautiful religion, including brotherly love and many other precepts which should tend to make men better and happier. But, when it all comes finally to a supreme test, our proudest scientific discoveries are put to sow mutilation, destruction, and sorrow; art and literature are brought into play to fan up the devouring flame of hatred and anger; even religion, under different names, is conveniently manipulated to condone the grossest outrages, and each one of the nations killing each other is invoking, in dead earnest, the support and indorsement of its own "only God" and its own interpretation of religion.

Some way or another we have kept on growing in knowledge and in resources, but certainly not in wisdom, and in the meantime our abundant treasures lie around, haplessly scattered about without order, like a lot of unpacked boxes of valuable material waiting only to be put to really good and orderly use.

There are on this globe about 1,500,o00,000 inhabitants. Most of us, who lack the sense of proportion, at the mention of this big number, are apt to speak of the "over-population" of the world. Yet, if we spare a few moments' thought, we shall better know what this represents. There is, in my study-room, a geographic globe about fifteen inches in diameter. On that sphere, there is marked a little spot, about the size of the point of a pencil-at any rate, so small as to make it impossible to write the initials of its name-Lake Champlain-upon it. Yet, whenever Lake Champlain freezes over, there is good standing-room for every one of all the inhabitants of the earth, and then this lake would be considerably less crowded than some of the busy streets

of New York. Indeed, strange as it may sound, every one, young and old, would find about one square yard to stand upon. Nay, more, if the very young and the very old would please to stand aside on the shores of the lake, the remainder of the total inhabitants of the world could arrange a skating-party, where there would be less crowding than is seen on a busy winter day on that skating-pond in New York's Central Park.

Sketching this picture is like visualizing the great tragedy of the human race the few people of this earth do not begin to realize their immense opportunities and their unused resources; meanwhile, they have the insane feeling that the world is "over-populated." All our science, our religion, our art have not given us common sense enough to learn how to use them to live comfortably and happily we, this mere handful of inhabitants on this immense world of ours. Nor does it look as if we were going to get to our senses before many generations to come, as long as we keep on muddling and blundering; as long as greed and vanity, lust for power, the main inheritance of the aims and thoughts of the past, together with some of our time-honored traditions, keep us in the cold, relentless grip of bygone ages. On the other hand, there is that undeniable possibility that those of the nations which may feel peacefully inclined and trust to luck by remaining unarmed, are liable at the most unexpected time to be at the mercy of the wild beast which lurks around, as the atavism of the primitive instincts of our race.

In the midst of this bungling humanity live some seers who have visions of the future. Decidedly different from the ancient philosophers who built their visions merely on the shifting quicksand of their imagination, our modern seers take their flights of fancy from the solid foundations of well-established scientific facts. Unfortunately, when they speak their voices are scarcely listened to, except by a very few, among the din and noise of the living habits of that humanity, half-child, halfsavage.

One of these seers, in England, spoke some years ago. His name is William Crookes. The British crown, by putting a little "Sir"-the lowest grade of non

hereditary nobility-before it, could certainly not make it more imposing to the few who know the man and his work. As to others, the name of William Crookes means nothing as compared to that of Harry Lauder or Charlie Chaplin.

In 1898 Sir William Crookes, at a memorable meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, sounded a warning—an alarm call—to the human race. What he said was substantially this: "We are relying on Chile nitrates for our needed supply of fertilizer for our wheat-fields and other crops. The consumption of this fertilizer is increasing steadily with the rapidly rising food requirements of our race. But the nitrate deposits of Chile will be exhausted before the end of this century. What means shall we devise for obtaining additional sources of nitrogen supply so as to prevent starvation of the human race?"

All this may sound better to the average reader after we tell him more about it. The whole story is nothing less than a modern epos of applied science. The story began the day when chemistry taught us how indispensable are the nitrogenous substances for the growth of all animal beings, for building up their tissues. Generally speaking, the most expensive foodstuffs are precisely those which contain most nitrogen; and this for the simple reason that there is, and always has been in the world, at some time or another, a shortage of nitrogenous foods-proteid-containing foods, as scientists call them.

Germany's most serious problem, at this moment, is how to get enough meat or other proteid food for her population and for her army; she has plenty of potatoes, but potatoes contain little or no proteids

they contain mostly starch; hence her bread-and-meat ticket system. Agriculture furnishes us these proteid or nitrogenous bodies, never mind whether we eat them directly as vegetable products, like wheat or beans, or indirectly, as meat, milk, cheese, or eggs, from any animals which have fed on proteid-containing plants, or eat other animals which live on plants.

It so happens that by our reckless methods of agriculture the plants take the nitrogen from the soil much faster than it

is supplied to the soil through some natural agencies from the air.

We should remember here that the atmosphere in which we live and breathe contains about four parts of nitrogen gas, mixed with one part of oxygen. But this gas, nitrogen of the air, can only be taken up by the plants under very particular conditions. So our farmers, long ago, have found it necessary to remedy this discrepancy by enriching the soil with manure and other fertilizers. But, with our growing population, we have been compelled to resort to methods of intensive culture, and our fields want more and ever more nitrogen.

Since these facts have been established by the chemists of the last century, agriculture has been looking around anxiously to find new sources of nitro

In 1825 a ship arrived in Europe loaded with Chile saltpetre as ballast; it tried to sell its cargo, but could find no buyer; so the cargo was thrown in the sea as useless material. This now seems rather funny; it was some time before it occurred to anybody that this Chile saltpetre, or ni

gen fertilizer. For a time an excellent supply was found in Peru, in the guano deposits, which are merely the result of dried excrements of birds, but the material was bought up so eagerly that, after a few years, the supply was practically exhausted.

Another source was found in the byproducts of gas works and coke-ovens, which by the distillation of coal produce a certain percentage of ammonia, and the latter, as sulphate of ammonia, has come into increasing use as a nitrogen fertilizer. Here, again, the supply, although seemingly enormous, cannot keep pace with the constantly growing demand, even if we leave out of consideration that our coal-beds are not everlasting.

trate of sodium,

is one of the best sources of nitrogen for agriculture, as well as a raw material for the manufacture of explosives and the other industries which require nitric acid. The awakening appreciation of the great value of this Chile saltpetre has, since then, developed

an enormous

commerce; exploitation of Chile nitratebeds has become not only a source of riches to the owners but to the Chilean Government as well, which lives on the revenues of the exportation tax which it lev

ies on every pound of Chile saltpetre which leaves its ports for every part of the civilized world. So practically every agricultural country, ours included, pays direct tribute to Chile for its food-supply.

This naturally increases the cost of this material, aside from the fact that the Chilean nitrate-beds cannot last forever. There is some heated controversy going on whether they will be empty by the middle of this century or by the end; but, after all, every one must admit that it is merely a matter of years before this natural storehouse of this valuable product will be entirely exhausted.

Just as important as the problem of the rapidly vanishing supply of Chilean nitrates is the fact that any fertilizer can

average yields per acre in Germany are more than twice as high as they are in the United States, and in Belgium they are still higher. It is significant, however, that in Belgium farmers use, on an average, more nitrogen per acre than the German farmers, and the latter use considerably more than our American farmers.

Free from all side considerations, nitrogen fertilizer is merely a labor-saving device. The same amount of seed, the same acres, and the same labor give considerably better yields by an increased use of nitrogen fertilizer. It seems obvious that a labor-saving device which is valuable with cheap European labor ought to be still more valuable with expensive American labor.

But no farmer can afford to use nitrogen fertilizer unless the price is low enough to make it worth while; otherwise the

The full warning of Sir William Crookes meant no more nor less than that before long our race would be confronted with nitrogen starvation. In a given country, all other conditions being equal, the abundance or the lack of available nitrogenous food has a direct bearing on the general welfare or the physical decadence of the population. The less nitrogen there is available for foodstuffs, the nearer the population is to starvation. The great famines in such countries as India, China, and Russia, were simply epochs of proteid-food deficiency, sad examples of nitrogen starvation.

And yet nitrogen as such, free and uncombined, is everywhere; it is so abundant that each column of air of our atmosphere resting upon every square foot of the earth's surface contains about 61⁄2 tons of nitrogen. The amount of nitrogen in the

air above one square mile of land, is about 20,000,000 tons, as much as the world will require in about fifty years. Unfortunately, free nitrogen is of no use as such, in this instance. It must be brought into some kind of a chemical combination before it is good for anything. Precisely there lies the difficulty of the problem, because nitrogen is one of the most indifferent, the most inert, of all chemicals. It is really too lazy to enter into combination, as most other chemicals do.

William Crookes' disquieting message of rapidly approaching nitrogen starvation did not cause much worry to politicians; they seldom look so far ahead. But to men of science it sounded like a reproach to the human race. Here, then, we were in possession of an inexhaustible store of nitrogen in the air, and yet, unless we found some practical means for bringing some of it into some suitable chemical combination, we would soon be in a position similar to that of a shipwrecked sailor drifting around on an immense ocean of brine and yet slowly dying for lack of drinking-water.

As the glimmer of a far-off beacon, indicating faintly a course to follow, there was the knowledge of a modest experiment, carried out as far back as 1785 by two Englishmen well known to science. One of them was aristocratic Lord Cavendish and the other democratic Priestley, whose restless thinking and liberal political opinions earned him his exile to the United States, where he lies buried.

They had shown, the one independently of the other, that if electric sparks are passed through air contained in a little glass tube, the oxygen was able to burn some of the nitrogen and to produce nitrous vapors. Chemists know how to convert these nitrous vapors into nitric acid and nitrates. At that time electricity itself was a mere toy, and nobody dreamed that some day it was to develop into one of our most powerful agencies. Such is the tremendous potency of some of these seemingly insignificant laboratory curiosities. It frequently happens that after they lie long dormant, half forgotten in the scientific literature, they blaze out as the starting-point of a revolutionary development of applied science.

Two American inventors, Charles S. Bradley and D. R. Lovejoy, in Niagara Falls, tried to build upon these meagre facts; they succeeded in creating the first industrial apparatus for converting the nitrogen of the air into nitric acid by means of electric sparks. As early as 1902 they published their results, as well as the details of their apparatus. To them belongs the credit of first demonstrating publicly that it was possible to produce nitric acid from the air in practically unlimited quantities. All that was necessary was enough capital and cheap electric power. Electric current as sold in Niagara Falls, at $18 a horse-poweryear, proved the first bar to the commercial utilization of their process. Furthermore, their financial backers, frightened by the need of huge further investments, instead of developing the process gave up the attempt.

Two Scandinavian inventors, Professor Birkeland and Doctor Eyde, in the meantime, attacked the same process in a different way. They were no longer handicapped by expensive water-power. The abundant falls in Norway, developed under very economical financing, were able to furnish them current at a price three to five times less than at Niagara Falls. Furthermore, the apparatus they used was devised in considerably bigger units1,000 to 3,000 kilowatts, as compared to the modest 12 kilowatt units of Bradley and Lovejoy-and after some years of strenuous work and expensive development the installation was gradually increased, so that before 1914 200,000 electrical horse-power were employed, and the capital invested amounted already to $27,000,000, to which further additions have been made later.

The process as used in Norway is the same process which the Dupont Powder Company is trying now to introduce in the United States. It is often called the "arc" process, because it is based on the oxidation of nitrogen of the air under the intense heat of the electric arc.

It is interesting to note that in this process only a relatively small fraction of the air is transformed into nitric acid. In fact, the Bradley-Lovejoy apparatus, which showed yields of conversion as much as two and one-half per cent, were