414 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLIX. No. 1270 



of thousand barrels of gas or other tar, for the 

 purpose of masking fortifications to be attacked, 

 or others that flank the assailing positions. 



"A quantity of dry firewood, chips, shavings, 

 straw, hay or other such combustible materials, 

 would also be requisite quickly to kindle the fires, 

 which ought to be kept in readiness for the first 

 favourable and steady breeze. 



"DUNDONALD 



"7th August, 1855." 



"Note. — The objects to be accomplished being 

 specially stated the responsibility of their accom- 

 plishment ought to rest on those who direct their 

 execution. 



"Suppose that the MalakofE and Kedan are the 

 objects to be assailed it might be judicious merely 

 to obscure the Redan (by the smoke of coal and 

 tar kindled in 'The Quarries'), so that it could 

 not annoy the Mamelon, where the sulphur fire 

 would be placed to expel the garrison from the 

 MalakofE, which ought to have all the cannon that 

 can be turned towards its ramparts employed in 

 overthrowing its undefended ramparts. 



"There is no doubt but that the fumes will en- 

 velop all the defenses from the MalakofE to the 

 Barracks, and even to the line of battleship, the 

 Twelve Apostles, at anchor in the harbour. 



"The two outer batteries, on each side of the 

 Port, ought to be smoked, sulphured, and blown 

 down by explosion vessels, and their destruction 

 completed by a few ships of war anchored under 

 cover of the smoke." 



That was Lord Duudonald's plan in 1855, im- 

 properly published in 1908, and by the Germans, 

 who thus learnt it, ruthlessly put into practise in 

 1915. 



Lord Dundonald's memoranda, together with 

 further elucidatory notes, were submitted by the 

 English government of that day to a committee 

 and subsequently to another committee in which 

 Lord Playfair took leading part. These com- 

 mittees, with Lord Dundonald's plans fully and in 

 detail before them, both reported that the plans 

 were perfectly feasible; that the efEects expected 

 from them would undoubtedly be produced; but 

 that those efEects were so horrible that no honor- 

 able combatant could use the means required to 

 produce them. The committee therefore recom- 

 mended that the scheme should not be adopted; 

 that Lord Dundonald's account of it should be de- 

 stroyed. How the records were obtained and pre- 

 served by those who so improperly published them 

 in 1908 we do not know. Presumably they were 

 foimd among Lord Panmure's papers. Admiral 



Lord Dundonald himself was certainly no party 

 to their publication. 



Thus it will be seen that the plan which England 

 had rejected as being too horrible for use in war- 

 fare has been, through the deplorable conduct of 

 those who somehow obtained and published it, 

 stolen from us by the Germans, and first used 

 against us. That having been done, we cannot 

 choose but retaliate in kind; for when such meth- 

 ods of warfare are used against us we must, for 

 our own protection and that of our soldiers, our- 

 selves use means similar and as eflScacious. Such 

 means lie ready to our hand in Admiral Lord 

 Dundonald's plans; and it is to be presumed that 

 they are now worked out and perhaps improved 

 upon by the modern chemists so as to enable us 

 efEectually to give back to the Germans as good a 

 gas as they send us. 



One of liie early, if not the earliest sug- 

 gestion as to tlie use of poison gas in shell is 

 found in an article of " Greek Fire," by B. W. 

 Eichardson.i 



He says : 



I feel it a duty to state openly and boldly, that 

 if science were to be allowed her full swing, if so- 

 ciety would really allow that "all is fair in war, ' ' 

 war might be banished at once from the earth as 

 a game which neither subject nor king dare play 

 at. Globes that could distribute liquid fire could 

 distribute also lethal agents, within the breath of 

 which no man, however puissant, could stand and 

 live. Prom the summit of Primrose Hill, a few 

 hundred engineers, properly prepared, could 

 render Regent's Park, in an incredibly short space 

 of time, utterly uninhabitable; or could make an 

 army of men, that should even fill that space, fall 

 with their arms in their hands, prostrate and help- 

 less as the host of Sennacherib. 



The question is, shall these things be? I do not 

 see that hiimanity should revolt, for would it not 

 be better to destroy a host in Regent 's Park by ma- 

 king the men fall as in a mystical sleep, than to 

 let down on them another host to break their 

 bones, tear their limbs asunder and gouge out 

 their entrails with three-cornered pikes; leaving 

 a vast majority undead, and writhing for hours in 

 torments of the damned? I conceive, for one, that 

 science would be blessed in spreading her wings on 

 the blast, and breathing into the face of a des- 

 perate horde of men prolonged sleep — for it need 

 not necessarily be a death — which they could not 



1 Popular Science Review, 3, 176, 1864. 



