JURIED POISON

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 46, 1 September 1928, Page 15

JURIED POISON

It is/good. news to hoar of seventy tons of poison gas dropped into tho Atlantic where it is 3000 feet deep. It seems a. pity that all tho world's poison-gas, all'its guns and ammunition, all its warships, cannot share tho sumo fate-, as the seventy tons! > The gas. that is gone was the remainder of a stock of phosgene left over from the war and stored at a chemical works on' the- south side of Hamburg, the German Government having been allowed to keep it for use in industrial processes, especially in dyeing. The decision to bury it at sea was tho outcome of a catastrophe some woeks earlier, when one of the storage tanks burst and a quantity of the gas escaped into the town, killing a dozt!n! people and,'making 250 others ill. Happily thero was a wind from the north, so that the gas soon reached the open country, while heavy rain destroyed its power. Had it been blown over tho city in dry weather the death-roll might have been appalling. Great indignation' has been aroused in Germany, that such a store should have been kept in such a place, and the cry has gone, up once more-for an end to tho whole business of war, of. which-thiß'horrible poison gas 1b only a- part. Perhaps it sounds strange to talk of so many tons of anything, so light as gas, but this gas, is heavier than a}r, which adds to its danger and it is stored in liquid form, though it becomes gaseoua when- it escapos.