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The Germans undoubtedly attached considerable importance to their brominated lachrymators. In this connection their persistent efforts to retain the bromine monopoly with their Stassfurt product and to crush the American industry before the war are significant.
Our strange garb was sufficient to prove us Germans, while a brief and accurate account of the attempted rescue of the mines of Stassfurt, given in perfect English, sufficed to credit my reappearance in the affairs of the free world as a matter of grave and urgent importance. A squad of men were sent at once to guard the vessel that had been left in charge of the mate.
Robert Schneider, of Berlin, who made his studies in the coal mines near Waldenburg and Altwasser, in Silesia, the salt mines of Stassfurt and the metal mines of Klausthal, in the Upper Harz Mountains. a. Found in the mines of Waldenburg; b. In the brown-coal pits near Westeregeln; c. a. Rhizomorpha canalicularis of Hoffmann, b. As regards the subterraneous flora, Dr.
Means were at once taken to alter the gas with which the Stassfurt mines were flooded, but I realized that meant nothing since I believed that my companions had abandoned the enterprise and the secret that had enabled me to invade mines had not been shared with any one in the outer world. As I anticipated, my revelation was accepted by the Chemical Staff as evidence of profound scientific genius.
Meanwhile the German lines were forced many miles to the rear before the impregnable barrier of the Ray had halted the progress of the World Armies. A few years after the coming of the Ray defences, occurred what history records as "The Tragedy of the Mines." Six thousand workmen went down into the potash mines of Stassfurt one morning and never came up again.
The success of these efforts certainly placed us in a difficult situation during the war, both with regard to production of drugs and lachrymators. German bromine was associated with potash in the Stassfurt mineral deposits, whereas the American product was produced from numerous salt springs and rock salt mines.
It took but a few hours to provide an apparatus to fire this gas as fast as it issued, and the potash mines of Stassfurt were regained for the world. My associates were for beginning mining operations at once, but I had been granted a twenty years' franchise on the output of these mines, and I was in no such haste.
I speak their language. I know their people. I never saw the inside of Berlin until I was brought here from the potash mines of Stassfurt, wearing the clothes and carrying the identification papers of one Karl Armstadt who was killed by gas bombs which I myself had ordered dropped into those mines."
Knowing these facts, I wasted no time in soliciting government aid for my project, but was content to secure a permit to attempt the recovery with private funds, with which my uncle's fortune supplied me in abundance. In April, 2151, I set up my laboratory on the edge of the area of death. I had never accepted the orthodox view as to the composition of the gas that issued from the Stassfurt mines.
My uncle had bequeathed me both his work and his fortune, but despairing of my ability worthily to continue his own brilliant researches on synthetic food, I turned my attention to the potash problem, in which I had long been interested. My reading of early chemical works had given me a particular interest in the reclamation of the abandoned potash mines of Stassfurt.
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