INVISIBLE POISON GAS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 23 August 1924, Page 16

INVISIBLE POISON GAS.

TERRIBLE WAR DISCOVERY. Scientists have discovered a deadly new poison gas. It can easily he distributed by aeroplanes. It is invisible and has no smell. No one who breathes it will be aware that he is inhaling death, hut within from six to twelve hours he will die in terrible agony, says the Daily Express. Ihe gas is. of such a nature that it sinks to the. ground, and will remain deadly in V basements or tube subways for two. • days. Combatant nations at the end of the war knew of this gas. But they were unable to manufacture it in sufficient quantities to use it. Chemists have now solved this problem. While the Washington Conference on disarmament was sitting SOD of the best young chemists in the United States were engaged at Edgewood Arsenal, near Washington, in research, on and manufacture of the gas. America has now immense supplies of it. Gas masks will he the only protection, hilt you cannot train a civilian population to use gas masks in a few minutes. Major Victor Lefebure, a great authority on chemical warfare/’said that at the end of the war there were indications that the Germans were manufacturing in a crude form a more terrible gas than any then in use, and that scientists have since then worked steadily towards perfecting this gas. It will he possible, added Major Lefebure, for a nation which knows thesecret of a really deadly gas to put. such a gas barrer round their country that for days no army could cross their territorv. About two tons of gas can: he carried hv one aeroplane, and such, an amount would spread deatli over a. quarter of a mile radius of the spot at which it was discharged.