and staves off his seizure, the almost furious demands for remedy after
remedy, that came in the early years of the war, are still ringing in
the hearts of many of us. No wonder that our small army of chemists is
grimly determined not to give up the independence in chemistry which war
has achieved for us! Only a widely enlightened public, however, can
insure the permanence of what farseeing men have started to accomplish
in developing the power of chemistry through research in every domain
which chemistry touches.

The general public should realize that in the support of great chemical
research laboratories of universities and technical schools it will be
sustaining important centers from which the science which improves
products, abolishes waste, establishes new industries and preserves
life, may reach out helpfully into all the activities of our great
nation, that are dependent on the transformation of matter.

The public is to be congratulated upon the fact that the writer of the
present volume is better qualified than any other man in the country to
bring home to his readers some of the great results of modern chemical
activity as well as some of the big problems which must continue to
engage the attention of our chemists. Dr. Slosson has indeed the unique
quality of combining an exact and intimate knowledge of chemistry with
the exquisite clarity and pointedness of expression of a born writer.

We have here an exposition by a master mind, an exposition shorn of the
terrifying and obscuring technicalities of the lecture room, that will
be as absorbing reading as any thrilling romance. For the story of
scientific achievement is the greatest epic the world has ever known,
and like the great national epics of bygone ages, should quicken the
life of the nation by a realization of its powers and a picture of its