NITROGEN: DEVIL OR GOD.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 157, 6 July 1916, Page 3

NITROGEN: DEVIL OR GOD.

Persons who talk v of the importance or c'lu niisTry in this war are usually talking of one thing only, though tiny max not know it —ami that thing is nitrogen. The chief chemistry of the was m practically centred in nitrogen, savs the Lancet. Recognising this fact, it is strange to think that we live by breathing an atmosphere containing SO per cent, of this element, which in certain combinations is dealing out death ~n an appalling. scare in all the fields of action. There are practically no useful explosives employed in which the action of nitrogen is not. concerned. Wit Lent its aid the great ships at sea could not be sunk, or innocent . victims on land killed, or property destroyed by the aeroplane and dirigible; while it serves to mow down whole columns of men in the field, for rifles, howitzers, machine-guns and grenades are ali dependent upon, and made terribly deadly by, the offices of nitrogen. We every day pass on to our lungs something like 450 gallons of nitrogen per 24 hours, which would be enough to make do pounds of tri-iiitro-toluol, or 40 pounds of guncotton. Thus the remarkable thing about nitrogen, above all other elements, is its power to destroy life or sustain it, according to the associates with which it is in company. With certain accomplices it forms deathdealing explosives, with: others it becomes a. nutritive materia?. It is the essentially romantic element, devil or god, according to its associations.