CHAPTER I.
TOXIC GASES.
The first recorded use of suffocating gases in warfare was about 431 B. C., sulphur fumes having been used in besieging the cities of Platea and Belium in the war between the Athenians and the Spartans. Similar uses of toxic substances are recorded during the Middle Ages. In August, 1855, the English Admiral Lord Dundonald, having observed the deadly character of the fumes of sulphur in Sicily, proposed to reduce Sebastopol by sulphur fumes, and worked out the details of the proposition. The English Government disapproved the proposition on the ground that "the effects were so horrible that no honorable combatant could use the means required to produce them."
That the probable use of poison gases was still in the minds of military men is evidenced by the fact that at The Hague conference in 1899 several of the more prominent nations of Europe and Asia pledged themselves not to use any projectiles whose only object was to give out suffocating or poisonous gases. Many of the Powers did not sign this declaration until later. Germany signed and ratified it on September 4, 1900, but the United States never signed it. Further, this declaration was not to be binding in case of a war in which a non-signatory was or became a belligerent. Admiral Mahan, a United States delegate, stated his position in regard to the use of gas in shell, at that time an untried theory, as follows:
The reproach of cruelty and perfidy addressed against these supposed shells was equally uttered previously against firearms and torpedoes, although both are now employed without scruple. It is illogical and not demonstrably humane to be tender about asphyxiating men with gas, when all are prepared to admit that it is allowable to blow the bottom out of an ironclad at midnight, throwing four or five hundred men into the sea to be choked by the water, with scarcely the remotest chance to escape.
The Second Hague Peace Congress in 1907 adopted rules for land warfare, and among them was article 23 which read as follows: "It is expressly forbidden to employ poisons or poisonous weapons."
The use of toxic gas in the great war dates back to April 22, 1915, on which day the Germans employed chlorine, a common and well-known gas, in an attack against the French and British lines in the northeastern part of the upper Ypres salient.
The methods of manufacturing toxic gases, the use of such gases, and the tactics connected with their use were new developments of this war; yet during the year 1918 from 20 to 30 per cent of all American battle casualties were due to gas, showing that toxic gas is one of the most powerful implements of war. The records show, however, that when armies were supplied with masks and other defensive appliances, only about 3 or 4 per cent of the gas casualties were fatal. This indicates that gas can be made not only one of the most effective implements of war, but one of the most humane. It will, of course, be necessary to remove the noncombatant population from a greater depth of country immediately in the rear of the fighting lines than formerly, in order that women and children may not be gassed. This additional sacrifice of territory for war uses is another element of effectiveness in the weapon.
Since Germany had chosen to utilize toxic gas in warfare, the allied nations were compelled to adopt like tactics; accordingly England and France, faced with the desperate situation resulting from advantages secured by the Germans through the employment of these new weapons, immediately turned their attention not only to devising methods for protecting their own troops, but also to securing supplies and equipment necessary for the utilization of toxic gas as an agent of warfare against the German Army.
Germany originated thereafter the use of most of the new forms of gas, but the allied nations and America were actually producing, at the time of the armistice, gases on a much greater scale than Germany was ever able to attain. In fact, America itself was producing gases at a rate several times as great as was possible in Germany.