THE POLES & GAS WARFARE

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 99, 24 October 1939, Page 8

THE POLES & GAS WARFARE

The elaborate manoeuvres of the Nazis around the question of gas warfare in Poland, reported in the last few days, are worth even greater attention than the cables have given them. The present effort of the Nazi propagandists is to prove that Britain supplied mustard gas to the Poles for use against German troops, but the campaign began in much simpler terms than that. The first effort was merely to establish that mustard gas was being used, and little time was lost in launching it. A party of correspondents of i utral newspapers was made up in' the third week of the war and taken to Rzeszow and Jaslo, about 180 miles south of Warsaw, where scattered Polish troops were still lurking around in the effort to escape towards their villages without being made prisoners by the invaders. The purpose of the visit was to show the correspondents a former Polish hospital in Jaslo where 14 German soldiers were reported to be fighting death after being injured by "mustard gas." One of the victims declared that he and his comrades in a sapper unit Were ordered to repair a damaged bridge and were gassed while doing so. An officer who showed the party the bridge explained that the Poles had attempted to blow it up, but had made only three holes in it. In the largest hole they had placed a mine connected by a wire to barrels of oil. ■ When the sappers arrived the first man to move the barrel was killed by "mustard gas." The next day another group of sappers [arrived to continue the work. They were also gassed and sent to hospital. One man slept in the uniform he wore while working (German efficiency!). Next day the skin of his whole body was burned. Four of the men had died. This, according to the Germans, who" had specially arranged the visit for the purpose of proving their case, was the only time that gas was known to have been used, in the war. The neutral correspondents appear to have accepted the story with some reserve, and to have advanced the German claims as German claims and no more. The German official statement accusing the Poles of using gas was issued on September 17. It declared that though Polish forces in the course of their operations had been proved to use mustard gas. "Germany's armed forces will also, in the future, remain faithful to the principle's of chivalrous humane warfare, as announced by the Fuhrer."