NITRATES FROM THE AIR.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 12814, 13 July 1912, Page 3 (Supplement)

NITRATES FROM THE AIR.

SIR WILLIAM RAMSAY ON A DANGER TO BRITAIN.

LONDON, June 1. That there were moments m the Boer War when the British Army and Navy had almost exhausted their reserves of explosives was one of the disquieting facts revealed by the Elgin Commission. In that struggle the supply of raw materials was neyer threatened, and the depletion of our magazines was -due to the enormous expenditure of cordite on the South; African battlefields. In a future struggle, however, unless special precautions are taken our supply of raw materials for explosive manufacture may ..he cut off. Attention was d raw P to this grave risk by SirVWilliam Ramsay m his lecture to the Science Guild last week.

For the manufacture of cordite large quantities of nitric acid are -required. This acid is pr spared from nitrate of .soda, for wh.ch we m this country are entirely dependent on Chili and Peru, where there arc immense natural deposits.

In a statement to a representative of the Daily Mail Sir William Ramsay elaborated his points. "In some things we arc enormously ahead m this country; m other things we are disgracefully behind. In provision we are disgracefully behind. Scandinavia, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Russia possess factories for preparing nitrates from the atmosphere largely for the purposes of agriculture, but also for tlie making of explosives. If it is true that some of our rivals have armed their mercantile shipping, the importation of nitrates from Chili and Peru would be stopped, and then what would we do for explosives? "My point is that it would be well worth while, even at some pecuniary loss, to establish factories, for extracting the nitrogen of the air to make nitric acid by means of electrical power. The power could be got from our coal fislds, or from the water power which it now available m Scotland. It would not be an expensive process. The cost would depend largely, on the power used. Whether or not the cost would be more expensive than imported nitrates has not been proved m this country.