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Better,
doubtless, to call it the "high explosive period," for various other
nitro-compounds besides guncotton are being used.
The important thing to note is that all the explosives from gunpowder
down contain nitrogen as the essential element. It is customary to call
nitrogen "an inert element" because it was hard to get it into
combination with other elements. It might, on the other hand, be looked
upon as an active element because it acts so energetically in getting
out of its compounds. We can dodge the question by saying that nitrogen
is a most unreliable and unsociable element. Like Kipling's cat it walks
by its wild lone.
It is not so bad as Argon the Lazy and the other celibate gases of that
family, where each individual atom goes off by itself and absolutely
refuses to unite even temporarily with any other atom. The nitrogen
atoms will pair off with each other and stick together, but they are
reluctant to associate with other elements and when they do the
combination is likely to break up any moment.


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