MODERN WARFARE.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 88, 15 April 1925, Page 5

MODERN WARFARE.

THE USE OF POISON GASES. A PLEA FOR RETENTION. "MORE HUMANE METHOD." Some remarkable claims are made in an article on poisonous gases and future •warfare, written by J. B. S. Haldane, which is a spirited defence of chemical warfare. Mr. Haldane should know what he is talking about, for his knowledge is twofold. It is both scientific and military; for in peace time he is a physiological chemist, in war time he was a bombing officer. The combined result of his technical knowledge and war experience (says the "Times") runs directly counter to current opinion, not only amog the people at large who have no pretensions to any knowledge of their own and can only believe what they are told, but also among those who do pretend to know, and still more perhaps among those who know everything by the light of nature. They have all got it into their heads that "gassing" is a most barbarous and inhumane method of warfare—just the sort of thing one might expect from the Germans, but only justified on our side by the principle of retaliation or necessity, and to be abjured for the future by all civilised peoples. Mr. Haldane holds a different opinion, which he supports by facts and a reasoned argument. He begins by discriminating between the several kinds of poisonous weapons, of which he says j twenty-five different ones were employed during the war. He divides them into four classes, according to their effect. The first are gases and vapours which arc poisonous when breathed. They include chlorine and phosgene, which were made familiar to the public by many lurid accounts in the early days of'their use: but they can all be [kept out by respirators, as eventually they were.* and Mr. Haldane thinks they are almost as obsolete as muzzleloading guns. " Tear Shells." Next come those which are poisonous only in very high concentrations, but which have such an excessively irritating effect on the eyes in low eomentrations that one part in live millions may render a man blind with tears in a few seconds. They do not apjtear to have had any very, serious or lasting effects, and they can be kept out by respirators or even goggles. These lachrymatory gases are perfectly efficacious against unprotected troops, as was proved by one episode in the war, and they are also the most humane of all weapons. Mr. Haldane suggests that the best way to humanise warfare would be to prohibit the use. of anything else in shells and at the same time" forbid the wearing of protectors: but he does not expect the suggestion to be adopted. The third group are smokes, consisting mostly of arsenic compounds. They too are 'very efficacious, and much more difficult to' guard against than the lachrymatory gases. Their action is- quite different. When inhaled in sufficient quantity they cause temporarily extreme pain in the head, mental distress, and even madness: but the symptoms pass off in most cases within 48 hours, and leave no permanent disability. Tev are therefore of a humane character, though less so than the second group. They were not much used in the war. but they would have been (by us) if it had continued Mr Haldane explains the technical reasons why it is difficult to stop fine smoke particles. The Blisterers. The fourth group are the blisterers, of which only one specimen—the socalled '-mustard gas"—was used in the war. It is a liquid which gives off a penetrating and corrosive vapour of astonishing power, poisonous to breathe, eating through clothes in a few minutes and causing blisters of the skin peculiarly resistant to healing. It caused more casualties to the British troops than all the other poisons put together: but the proportion ot fatal cases was only one in 40, and of permanently disabled one in 200 Of shell casualties the proportion of fatal cases is one in three. Mustard ga* disables temporarily without killing: and this is. oddly enough, the reason why its suggested" use. on our side early in the war was turned down by the military ability. But it is a highly efficient weapon, as the Germans proved when they introduced it and compelled u.s to follow suit. Tts use is banned by the provisions of the Washington Conference, but Mr. Haldane thinks this a mistake which outfit to be rectified. He contends that it ""is more humane than the old weapons, and that its use on the largest possible scale would shorten war with less loss of life and less destruction of property: and he denies that H would lead to the wiping out ot tli<! population of whole cities or be a o destructive as bombing on the wm* hypothetical scale, particularly it tiif inhabitants were provided with respirators and sufficiently instructed in tii nature and extent of the danger no to give way to blind terror of th. »n known.