t, not a whole; I am a little instrument in the
armoury of Change. If I were to burn all these papers, before a score of
years had passed, some other man would be doing this. . .

Section 3

Holsten, before he died, was destined to see atomic energy dominating
every other source of power, but for some years yet a vast network of
difficulties in detail and application kept the new discovery from any
effective invasion of ordinary life. The path from the laboratory to the
workshop is sometimes a tortuous one; electro-magnetic radiations
were known and demonstrated for twenty years before Marconi made them
practically available, and in the same way it was twenty years before
induced radio-activity could be brought to practical utilisation. The
thing, of course, was discussed very much, more perhaps at the time of
its discovery than during the interval of technical adaptation, but with
very little realisation of the huge economic revolution that impended.
What chiefly impressed the journalists of 1933 was the production of
gold from bismuth and the realisation albeit upon unprofitable lines of
the alchemist's dreams; there was a considerable amount of discussion
and expectation in that more intelligent section of the educated
publics of the various civilised countries which followed scientific
development; but for the most part the world went about its business--as
the inhabitants of those Swiss villages which live under the perpetual
threat of overhanging rocks and mountains go about their business--just
as though the possible was impossible, as though the inevitable was
postponed for ever because it was delayed.

It was in 1953 that the first Holsten-Roberts engine brought induced
radio-activity into the sphere of industrial production, and its first
general use was to replace the steam-engine in electrical generating
stations. Hard upon the appearance of this came the Dass-Tata
engine--the invention of two among the brilliant galaxy of Bengali
inventors the modernisation of Indian thought was producing at this
time--which was used chiefly for automobiles, aeroplanes, waterplanes,
and such-like, mobile purposes. The American Kemp engine, differing
widely in principle but equally practicable, and the Krupp-Erlanger
came hard upon the heels of this, and by the autumn of 1954 a gigantic
replacement of industrial methods and machinery was in progress all
about the habitable globe. Small wonder was this when the cost, even o