In a recent Press utterance we find an appeal to prohibit chemical warfare and to "trust the general sentiment of the civilised world to say that the lesson has been learnt in that sense." "There is the League of Nations to furnish that sentiment with a mouthpiece and a sanction." We agree, but to stop there is dangerous, the most important thing which it must furnish is a mechanism of control, a check, or guarantee. This question is one of the most important which confronts us for world peace. It merits the most careful consideration.
Even responsible and relevant officials who admit that their League must do more than issue edicts, that their mechanism must function, are ignoring the specific technical aspect of the war methods whose use we wish to limit. This matter will receive later attention.
The following pages, therefore, are an attempt to represent the salient points in the development of chemical warfare, its causes, results, and future. Such an attempt cannot limit itself to merely British developments, and this is not a final detailed memoir of British chemical warfare. Further, in considering the future, we examine another aspect of chemical warfare. Facts lead us to believe that it was purely the most open and obvious activity in a whole campaign of chemical aggression which had effective unity of conception and direction long before the war started.
Need for a Balanced View of Chemical Warfare.—The facts of chemical warfare have probably been less ventilated than those of any other important war development. Yet no subject has aroused more general and intense feeling. Tanks, aircraft, the different campaigns, enemy memoirs, and a variety of war subjects, have received a considerable measure of publicity, some more than full measure. Grave questions are pending in which the chemical aspect of national defence is a prominent factor. However willing the individual concerned, he cannot make a sound judgment on the brief technical or popular garbled versions which have appeared. One searches in vain for balanced and detailed statements on the question. This may be due in no way to lack of intention, but to lack of opportunity. Therefore, no excuse is needed for this contribution, but rather an apology for the obscurity which has so far surrounded the subject. What is the cause of this emotional or almost hysterical background from which a clear definition of the matter is only now beginning to emerge? Circumstances are to blame; the first open act of chemical warfare decided the matter.
This event, the first German cloud gas attack at Ypres, arriving at the peak of allied indignation against a series of German abuses, in particular with regard to the treatment of prisoners, left the world aghast at the new atrocity. Further, its use against entirely unprotected troops was particularly revolting. The fact that such a cloud of chlorine would have passed the 1918 armies untouched behind their modern respirators, could not be known to, nor appreciated by the relatives of the 1915 casualties. But the emotion and indignation called forth by the first use of gas has survived a period of years, at the end of which the technical facts would no longer, of themselves, justify such feeling. We would hesitate to do anything which might dispel this emotional momentum were we not convinced that, unaccompanied by knowledge, it becomes a very grave danger. If we felt that the announcement of an edict was sufficient to suppress chemical warfare we would gladly stimulate any public emotion to create such an edict. But therein lies the danger. Owing to certain technical peculiarities, which can be clearly revealed by examination of the facts, it is impossible to suppress chemical warfare in this way. As well try to suppress disease by forbidding its recurrence. But we can take precaution against disease, and the following examination will show clearly that we can take similar precautions against the otherwise permanent menace of chemical war. Further, backed by such precautions, a powerful international edict has value.
It is, therefore, our intention to present a reasoned account of the development of poison gas, or chemical warfare, during the recent war. But to leave the matter there would be misleading and culpable, for, however interesting the simple facts of the chemical campaign, they owed their being to a combination of forces, whose nature and significance for the future are infinitely more important. The chief cause of the chemical war was an unsound and dangerous world distribution of industrial organic chemical forces. Unless some readjustment occurs, this will remain the "point faible" in world disarmament. We, therefore, propose to examine the relationships between chemical industry, war, and disarmament.
Some Preliminary Explanation.—The chemistry of war, developed under the stress of the poison gas campaign, is of absorbing chemical and technical interest, but it has none the less a general appeal. When its apparently disconnected and formidable facts are revealed as an essential part of a tense struggle in which move and counter-move followed swiftly one upon the other, its appeal becomes much wider. Therefore, in order not to confuse the main issue in the following chapters by entering upon tiresome definitions, it is proposed to conclude the present chapter by explaining, simply, a number of chemical warfare conceptions with which the expert is probably well acquainted.
"Poison Gas" a Misleading Term—Poison gas is a misleading term, and. our subject is much better described as "chemical, warfare." Let us substantiate this by examining briefly the types of chemicals which were used. In the first place they were not all gases; the tendency during the war was towards the use of liquids and solids. Even the chemicals which appeared as gases on the field of battle were transported and projected as liquids, produced by compression. As the poison war developed, a large number of different chemicals became available for use by the opposing armies. These can he classified, either according to their tactical use, or according to their physiological effects on man.
The British, French, American, and German armies all tended to the final adoption of a tactical classification, but the French emphasised the physiological side. Let us use their classification as a basis for a review of the chief chemicals concerned.
The French Physiological Classification;—Asphyxiating Substances;— Toxic Substances;—Chemicals or poison gases were either asphyxiating, toxic, lachrymatory, vesicant, or sternutatory. It is perfectly true that the asphyxiating and toxic substances, used during the war, produced a higher percentage of deaths than the other three classes, but the latter were responsible for many more casualties. The so-called asphyxiating gases produced their effect by producing lesions and congestion in the pulmonary system, causing death by suffocation. The best known substances of this type was chlorine, employed in the liquid state in cylinders on the occasion of the first German gas attack, but the most formidable were phosgene (an important substance required in the manufacture of dyes), diphosgene, chlor-picrin, made from bleaching powder and picric acid, brom-acetone, which was also a powerful lachrymator, and diphenylchlorarsine, known as sneezing gas, the first sternutatory or sneezing compound to appear on the front in large quantities. The toxic compounds were so called because of their specific effect upon particular parts of the organism such as, for example, the nervous system. The chief example, with regard to the military value of which there has been much dispute, was prussic, or hydrocyanic, acid. The French had definite evidence of the mortal effect of this compound upon German gunners, but it was doubted by other Allies whether French gas shell produced a sufficient concentration of gas to be of military value. It was a kill or cure compound, for recovery was rapid from any concentration which did not produce death.