Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights Part 44

TRANSFORMS A NATION.

In less than three years after the distress in which the country found itself in 1909 he transformed the nation into one of solidarity. There had been meaningless squabbles of corrupt politicians and a sordid struggle for preferment. The army was degenerating and the popular fury became so great that there was an uprising of the army, which under the t.i.tle of the "Military League," ousted the Government and took control of the country. The heads of the League brought forward Venizelos. The League dissolved and reforms were inst.i.tuted which started the country on a new path, and when the Balkan war broke in 1912 Greece made a record and emerged in many respects the leader of the Balkan states.

Sir John French is one of the English commanders who have rendered yeoman service in the war. He is one of the most striking military figures in England. He has seen service in India, Africa and Canada, and was one of the uniformly successful commanders in the Boer war. At the Siege of Kimberly he was shut up in Ladysmith with the Boer lines drawing closer. He managed to secrete himself under the seat of a train on which women were being carried to safety. Outside the lines he made his way to the Cape, where he was put in charge of cavalry and in a terrific drive he swept through the Free State and reached Ladysmith in time to save the day.

He originally entered the navy, but remained for a short time. He commanded the 19th Hussars from 1889 to 1903 and then rose steadily in rank until he was made General Inspector of the Forces and finally Field Marshal in 1903.

There should be no discrimination in naming those who have represented America in the country's activities at war, but because they came into the world's line of vision by being sent abroad for service there are some American commanders whose names will ever be remembered.

Vice-Admiral William S. Sims is one of these. He is a Pennsylvanian who was born in Canada. His father was A.W. Sims, of Philadelphia, who married a Canadian and lived at Port Hope, where Admiral Sims first saw the light of day. He went to Annapolis when he was 17 years of age and was graduated in 1880. After this he secured a year's leave of absence and went to France, where he studied French. Subsequently he was a.s.signed to the Tennessee, the flags.h.i.+p of the North Atlantic Squadron and pa.s.sed through all grades of s.h.i.+ps. He received promotion to a Lieutenancy when he was about 30 years of age. For a time he was in charge of the Schools.h.i.+p Saratoga, and later was located at Charleston Navy Yard, and also with the receiving s.h.i.+p at the League Island Navy Yard, Philadelphia. After this he went to Paris as Naval Attache at the American Emba.s.sy. He was similarly Attache at the American Emba.s.sy at St. Petersburg.

Admiral Sims was relieved of his European a.s.signment in 1900 and joined the Asiatic fleet, and while abroad studied the methods of British gunnery. When he returned to America later he inaugurated reforms which increased the efficiency of the gunnery in the service 100 per cent. His successful efforts led to his appointment as Naval Aide to President Roosevelt. He made a report on the engagement between the British and German naval fleets at Jutland which was startling, and declared that the British battle cruisers had protected Great Britain from the invasion of the enemy.

When he reached the European waters in command of the United States naval forces, with a destroyer flotilla, and the British officers who greeted him asked when the flotilla would be ready to a.s.sist in chasing the submarine and protecting s.h.i.+pping, Admiral Sims created a surprise by tersely replying: "We can start at once." And he did. Admiral Sims married Miss Anne Hitchc.o.c.k, daughter of Former Secretary of the Interior. The couple have five children.

Major General John J. Pers.h.i.+ng, of the United States Army, Commander of the forces in France and Belgium, is one of the most picturesque figures in American military circles. "Black Jack" Pers.h.i.+ng is what the officers call him, because he was for a long time commander of the famous Tenth Cavalry of Negroes, which he whipped into shape as Drillmaster, and which saved the Rough Riders from a great deal of difficulty at San Juan Hill in the Spanish-American War. He was also at the battle of El Caney where he was given credit for being one of the most composed men in action that ever graced a battlefield. He served with signal results in the campaign against the little "brown" men in the Philippines; was in charge of the expedition which chased Villa into Mexico.

General Pers.h.i.+ng was born in 1864 in Laclede, Missouri, and is tall, wiry and strong. Every inch of his six feet is of fighting material. He is a man of action and has a penchant for utilizing the services of young men rather than staid old officers of experience. Pers.h.i.+ng is a real military man, and has been notably absent from such things as banquets and other functions where by talking he might get into the lime light. It is true that he was jumped over the heads of a number of officers by President Roosevelt, but he has carved his way by his own efforts, and no man could have more fittingly been sent to take charge of the American forces abroad than "Jack" Pers.h.i.+ng.

CHAPTER XX.

CHEMISTRY IN THE WAR.

SUBSt.i.tUTES FOR COTTON--NITRATES PRODUCED FROM AIR--YEAST A REAL SUBSt.i.tUTE FOR BEEF--SEAWEED MADE TO GIVE UP POTASH--A GANGRENE PREVENTATIVE--SODA MADE OUT OF SALT WATER--AMERICA CHEMICALLY INDEPENDENT.

It is when men are put to the test that they develop initiative and are inspired to great things. In the stress of circ.u.mstances there were created through and in the great war many unusual devices and much that will endure for the benefit of mankind in the future. It is probable that the advancements made in many lines would not have been attained in years but for the necessity which demanded the exertion of men's ingenuity, and in no field was this advancement greater than in that of chemistry.

Any struggle between men is, in the last a.n.a.lysis, a battle of wits, but it remained for those planning and scheming to defeat their fellow men or protect themselves in the world conflict to make for the first time in history the fullest use of the chemist's knowledge. Largely the successes of the war have been due to the studies and activities of the chemists, working in their laboratories far from the actual field of strife.

Not only has their knowledge been turned to the creation of tremendously destructive explosives, the like of which have never before been known in warfare, but the same brains which have been utilized to a.s.sist man in his death-dealing crusades have been called upon to thwart the efforts of the warring humans and save the lives of those compelled to face the withering fire of cannon, the flaming grenade and the asphyxiating gas bomb.

In the food crisis which confronted the nations, chemists drew from the very air and the waters of the river and sea, gases and salts to take the place of those which became limited in their supply because of the demands of the belligerents.

The chemist is one of those who fights the battles at home. The resisting steel, the penetrating sh.e.l.l, the poisonous gas, the power-producing oil, the powerful explosive--all these are his contributions to the war's equipment, but he also is the magician who waves the wand and out of the apparently useless weeds and vegetable matter produces edibles. He turns waste products into valuable chemicals or extracts needed chemicals from by-products.

GERMANY'S GREAT PRIVATION.

Germany, deprived of many imports by the sea power of England, first transformed herself into a self-supporting nation through the agency of the chemist. Subst.i.tutes had to be provided for food products which the Germans could not get, and it is said that the ability of the Kaiser and his henchmen to withstand the attacks of the Allied forces was due as much to the service rendered by the chemists as by the army and navy.

Not only were artificial foodstuffs manufactured, but natural food products previously neglected were prepared for use. What had been regarded as useless weeds were found to possess food value. A dozen wild-growing plants were found that might be used as a subst.i.tute for spinach, while half a dozen others were shown to be good subst.i.tutes for salads. Starches were obtained from roots, and cheap grades of oils and fatty wastes of all sorts were turned into edibles.

Up until the advent of the present war cotton formed the base of most of the so-called propellant explosives used in advanced warfare. Such terrible explosives as trinitrotoluene occasionally mentioned in the published war reports, as well as many others, have as the princ.i.p.al agent of destructive force guncotton, which is ordinary raw cotton or cellulose treated with nitric or sulphuric acid, though there are, of course, other chemicals used in compounding the various forms of deadly explosives.

At the same time there are innumerable explosives which are of a distinct cla.s.s. Lyddite, mentioned occasionally as one of the modern death-dealing explosives, has for a base picric acid. The Lyddite sh.e.l.ls referred to occasionally in various articles about the war are sh.e.l.ls in which Lyddite is used as the explosive. The largest percentage of explosives used in modern gunnery are those formed of nitrated cellulose--guncotton.

TWO GREAT FACTORS.

Therefore any shortage in the supply of cotton and cellulose is a serious matter in war time, for the country which has the most plentiful supply of ammunition is the one that has the greatest relative advantage. It was, for instance, stated from Was.h.i.+ngton several times after the war started and the United States commercial and industrial forces were being mobilized, that America could make enough almost unbelievably powerful explosives to blow Germany off the face of the European map, were it possible to transport the dangerous materials.

Dozens of new explosive compounds were placed before the Government for consideration and in application for patents. One of the new ones, it was said, was so powerful that little more than a pinch of it exploded beneath such an immense structure as the Woolworth Building, New York, would destroy the entire edifice.

The curtailment of the supply of cotton to Germany when the war started, because of England's blockade, and later when America entered the conflict, threatened disaster to the "Fatherland." The German chemists began working immediately to supply subst.i.tutes for cotton, to be used both in the manufacture of explosives and fabrics. They developed the processes of producing cellulose from wood pulp to take the place of cotton for making guncotton, and certain forms of wood fiber and paper were used in the textile trades. Willow bark was one of the substances utilized to a limited degree in making fabrics.

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 j.a.pan.

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, subst.i.tutes 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 princ.i.p.ally 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 quant.i.ties of sugar are used in making powder and explosives, too, and when the supply became limited the German chemists began producing in larger quant.i.ties the chemical subst.i.tute--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 att.i.tudes which they had a.s.sumed 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 subst.i.tutes. They took the residue or waste from the breweries and extracting the bitter hops taste from the dried yeast produced a subst.i.tute for beef extract.

So also they secured ammonium sulphate by a direct combination of nitrogen and hydrogen in the air. At the same time they utilized other minerals than those usually available for the manufacture of sulphuric acid and placed the country on an independent footing.

But Germany was not alone in its advancement. The United States, which found itself without quant.i.ties of dye-stuffs and many other chemically produced things when the war came on, took the lesson unto itself and is today nearer self-supporting than it ever was in the history of the nation. The Department of Agriculture has experimented and produced from yeast, vegetable boullion cubes, which taste like beef extract and contain greater nutriment.

DOMESTIC DYE-STUFFS.

America, too, has extracted sulphate of ammonium from the air and the dye-stuffs which we could not get from abroad are being made at home.

Two of the things which America found lacking when war developed were potash and acetone, both of which are factors in powder and explosive making. The former is used in the ordinary black gunpowder, but the latter is necessary in the making of the smokeless powder. England wanted Cordite, one form of this powder which the British think is the best propellant in the world. It is made of guncotton and nitroglycerine and acetone is one of the chemicals required in its manufacture. England turned to the United States for quant.i.ties of this explosive and also for the acetone, but America did not produce anywhere near enough, and England wanted this country to make something like 20,000,000 pounds of the explosive.

A number of mushroom chemical plants were developed by the powder company to produce the desired acetone--one very much like a vinegar plant near Baltimore, and another at San Diego, California, where the munitions maker's chemists refined acetone and potash extracted from kelp, or sea weed, and besides supplying the powder and the chemicals which the English needed America developed a permanent industry.

RELIEVED BY AMERICAN INGENUITY.

Carbolic acid, too, was one of the badly needed chemicals of the war, not only for medical purposes, but also for explosive making. Again the ingenuity of America a.s.serted itself and Thomas A. Edison produced the plans for two benzol-absorbing plants which were erected at great steel works and within a few months these plants were turning out benzol and Mr. Edison's carbolic-acid plant was being supplied with the raw material.

And then it was believed that America could not make dyes to take the place of those which came from Germany. All the United States, it was said, would have to wear white stockings. The country just could not produce the dyes necessary, and the product of the American plants was inferior. But America could make the same dyes. She is making them.