nitrate and ammonia fertilizer for her fields. Inventions of substitutes
for cotton, copper, rubber, wool and many other basic needs have been
reported.

These feats of chemistry, performed under the stress of dire necessity,
have, no doubt, excited the wonder and interest of our public. It is far
more important at this time, however, when both for war and for peace
needs, the resources of our country are strained to the utmost, that the
public should awaken to a clear realization of what this science of
chemistry really means for mankind, to the realization that its wizardry
permeates the whole life of the nation as a vitalizing, protective and
constructive agent very much in the same way as our blood, coursing
through our veins and arteries, carries the constructive, defensive and
life-bringing materials to every organ in the body.

If the layman will but understand that chemistry is the fundamental
_science of the transformation of matter_, he will readily accept the
validity of this sweeping assertion: he will realize, for instance, why
exactly the same fundamental laws of the science apply to, and make
possible scientific control of, such widely divergent national
industries as agriculture and steel manufacturing. It governs the
transformation of the salts, minerals and humus of our fields and the
components of the air into corn, wheat, cotton and the innumerable other
products of the soil; it governs no less the transformation of crude
ores into steel and alloys, which, with the cunning born of chemical
knowledge, may be given practically any conceivable quality of hardness,
elasticity, toughness or strength. And exactly the same thing may be
said of the hundreds of national activities that lie between the two
extremes of agriculture and steel manufacture!