Mat 2, 1919] 



SCIENCE 



415 



grrapple with, and which would yield them up with 

 their implements of murder to an enemy that in 

 the immensity of its power could afford to be 

 merciful as Heaven. 



The question is, shall these things bet I think 

 they must be. By what compact can they be 

 stopped? It were improbable that any congress of 

 nations could agree on any code regulating means 

 of destruction: but if it did, it were useless; for 

 science becomes more powerful as she concentrates 

 her forces in the hands of units, so that a nation 

 could only act, by the absolute and individual 

 assent of each of her representatives. Assume, 

 then, that France shall lay war to England, and by 

 superior force of men should place immense hosts, 

 well armed, on English soil. Is it probable that 

 the units would rest in peace and allow sheer brute 

 force to win its way to empire? Or put English 

 troops on French soil, and reverse the question? 



To conclude. War has, at this moment, reached, 

 in its details, such an extravagance of horror and 

 cruelty, that it can not be made worse by any art, 

 and can only be made more merciful by being 

 rendered more terribly energetic. Who that had to 

 die from a blow would not rather place his head 

 under Nasmyth's hammer, than submit it to a 

 drummer-boy armed with a ferrule? 



The Armp and Navy Register of May 29, 

 1915, reports that 



among the recommendations forwarded to the 

 Board of Ordnance and Fortifications there may 

 be found many suggestions in favor of the 

 asphyxiation process, mostly by the employment 

 of gases contained in bombs to be thrown within 

 the lines of the foe, with varying effects from 

 peaceful slumber to instant death. One ingenious 

 person suggested a bomb laden to its full capacity 

 with snuff, which should be so evenly and thor- 

 oughly distributed that the enemy would be con- 

 vulsed with sneezing, and in this period of par- 

 oxysm it would be possible to creep up on him and 

 capture him in the throes of the convulsion. 



That the use of poison gasos was not new in 

 the minds of military men follows loarically 

 from the fact that at the Hagrue Conference 

 in 1899, the governments represented — and all 

 the warring powers of the present great con- 

 flict were represented — ^pledged themselves not 

 to use any projectiles whose only object was to 

 give out suffocating or poisonous gases. At 

 the Congress of 1907, article 23 of the rules 

 adopted for war on land states: 



It is expressly forbidden (a), to employ poisons 

 or poisonous weapons. 



Before the war suffocating cartridges were 

 shot from the cartridge-throwing rifle of 26 

 mm. These cartridges were charged with 

 ethyl bromoacetate, a slightly suffocating and 

 non-toxic lachrjTiiator. They were intended 

 for attack on the flanking works of permanent 

 fortifications, flanking casements or caponiers, 

 into which they tried to make these cartridges 

 penetrate by the narrow slits of the loopholes. 

 The men who were serving the machine guns 

 or the cannon of the flanking works would 

 have been bothered by the vapor from the 

 ethyl bromoacetate, and the assailant would 

 have profited by their disturbance to get past 

 the obstacle presented by the fortification. 

 The employment of these devices, not entail- 

 ing death, did not contravene the Hague con- 

 ventions. 



The only memorable operations in the course 

 of which these devices were used before the 

 war was the attack on the Bonnet gang at 

 Choisy-le-roi. 



In the war of the trenches there has been 

 an abuse in the employment of these suffo- 

 cating cartridges; an abuse because the small 

 quantity of liquid that they contain, about 19 

 cubic centimeters, can produce no effect on a 

 terrain without cover. 



In connection with the suggested use of 

 sulphur dioxide by Lord Dimdonald and the 

 proposed use of poisonous gases in shell, the 

 following description of a charcoal respirator 

 by Dr. J. Stanhouse,- communicated by Dr. 

 George Wilson is of interest. 



Dr. Wilson commenced by stating, that having 

 read with much interest the account of Dr. Sten- 

 house's researches on the deodorizing and disin- 

 fecting properties of charcoal, and the application 

 of these to the construction of a new and im- 

 portant kind of respirator, he had requested the 

 accomplished chemist to send one of his instru- 

 ments for exhibition to the society, which he had 

 kindly done. Two of the instruments were now 

 on the table, differing, however, so slightly in con- 

 struction, that it would be sufficient to explain 



2 Trans. Royal Scottish Soc. Arts, 4, Appendix 

 O, 198, 1854. 



