The British sent a fleet
to the Pacific to clear the nitrate route, but it was outranged and
defeated on November 1, 1914. Then a stronger British fleet was sent
out and smashed the Germans off the Falkland Islands on December 8. But
for seven weeks the nitrate route had been closed while the chemical
reactions on the Marne and Yser were decomposing nitrogen-compounds at
an unheard of rate.
England was now free to get nitrates for her munition factories, but
Germany was still bottled up. She had stored up Chilean nitrates in
anticipation of the war and as soon as it was seen to be coming she
bought all she could get in Europe. But this supply was altogether
inadequate and the war would have come to an end in the first winter if
German chemists had not provided for such a contingency in advance by
working out methods of getting nitrogen from the air. Long ago it was
said that the British ruled the sea and the French the land so that left
nothing to the German but the air. The Germans seem to have taken this
jibe seriously and to have set themselves to make the most of the aerial
realm in order to challenge the British and French in the fields they
had appropriated.
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