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THE CHEMICAL WARFARE SERVICE 



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CLARENCE J. WEST 



HEMISTS have always played a certain role in modern 

 warfare. This role, however, was always more or less 

 superficial. It consisted simply in an attempt to perfect gun 

 powder and to suggest new and more powerful explosives, not 

 to make war more horrible but to shorten, if possible, its dura- 

 tion. The chemist was buried in his laboratory, in Government 

 arsenals or in the plants of privately owned ammunition com- 

 panies. He played no prominent part, as did the engineer or 

 the medical man. The introduction of poison gas and the 

 flaming liquid gun by the Germans during the year 1915 

 changed this relationship and as the war progressed the chemist 

 came to play one of the lending roles. It is not fair to the other 

 scientific men to call the late war " a chemist's war," but we 

 must admit that his was no mean part and that it was very 

 largely due to the tremendous advances in chemical knowledge 

 and the extensive gas program laid down by the Allies that the 

 war terminated when it did. 



This honor is to be equally divided between the academic and 

 the industrial men. Even though industry is always using the 

 results of purely scientific research, there has been a tendency 

 on the part of the industrial men to decry the value of academic 

 research. This feeling was entirely lost sight of during the 

 past struggle and the two great classes of chemists worked 

 hand in hand, often in the same office or laboratory, in order 

 that a common end might be gained. No greater example of 



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