2 SEPTEMBER 1911, Page 3

Turning from educational polemics to his own sphere of science,

Sir William Ramsay discussed the future and possible utilization of radium. A ton of radium, be te.d us, if we could control the rate of its disintegration, would drive a battleship for thirty years, to do which actually required a million and a half tons of coal. But the supply of radium is never likely to exceed half an ounce a year. lf, however, other and more stable elements should prove capable of die- integration, and if some form of catalyser could be discovered which would usefully increase their almost inconceivably slow rate of change, the world would have at its disposal a hitherto unsuspected source of energy, and the whole future of our race would be altered. But it would be foolish to rely on so remote a possibility as this.