The microscopic structure of metals 273




INTRODUCTION

BY JULIUS STIEGLITZ

Formerly President of the American Chemical Society, Professor of
Chemistry in The University of Chicago


The recent war as never before in the history of the world brought to
the nations of the earth a realization of the vital place which the
science of chemistry holds in the development of the resources of a
nation. Some of the most picturesque features of this awakening reached
the great public through the press. Thus, the adventurous trips of the
_Deutschland_ with its cargoes of concentrated aniline dyes, valued at
millions of dollars, emphasized as no other incident our former
dependence upon Germany for these products of her chemical industries.

The public read, too, that her chemists saved Germany from an early
disastrous defeat, both in the field of military operations and in the
matter of economic supplies: unquestionably, without the tremendous
expansion of her plants for the production of nitrates and ammonia from
the air by the processes of Haber, Ostwald and others of her great
chemists, the war would have ended in 1915, or early in 1916, from
exhaustion of Germany's supplies of nitrate explosives, if not indeed
from exhaustion of her food supplies as a consequence of the lack of