MAKING GAS-MASKS

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 4323, 20 July 1937, Page 7

MAKING GAS-MASKS

PROTECTION OF CIVILIANS BRITAIN LEADS THE WAY “People sometimes ask me why tne Government is manufacturing gas masks and arranging for all the other precautions against air raids,” said Mr Geoffrey Lloyd, M.P., Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Home Office, in a recent broadcast address. “The answer is quite simple. We hope we shall never be at war again; we hope that no hostile aeroplanes will ever raid our towns; we hope that no poison gas will ever be dropped upon our people. But we have to face the fact that bombing a aeroplanes can fly very much faster and farther and carry enormously greater loads than in 1918; and so we know that the result of air raids might be terrible in the ex'treme if no precautions had been taken. The vital point to realise is that these precautions require a basis of elaborate organisation and equipment which it would be impossible to provide on the spur of the moment in the hour of danger. The only safe policy therefore is to get the organisation and equipment ready in case it should ever be needed. That is what we are doing. In an air raid the right place for civilians for many reasons would be indoors in a room in which certain simple precautions had been taken—for instance, by making it gas-proof by pasting paper over openings and stopping up cracks with sodden newspaper, etc. This refuge room would be, so to speak, the first line of defence, but we regard it as vital to have a second line of defence in the shape of a gas mask for use in case the gas-proof room was damaged or to enable a person caught out of doors in poison gas to go to a place of safety. So it was that in considering these matters the Government came to the conclusion that in time of war everyone exposed to danger ought to have a gas mask—everyone, whether rich or poor, whether they had the money to buy it or not. Scientific and technical experts were set to work on a difficult and entirely new problem; how to design and produce a simplified and improved gas mask which could be made by the million by mass production methods. After a great deal of experimental work the Government experts succeeded in their task, and so 1 was able to announce in Parliament some months ago that the Government would accumulate stocks of gas masks, and that in the event of an emergency they would be issued free of charge to everyone in areas exposed to attack. Since" then the arrangements for actual production have been pushed ahead with the utmost speed. Indeed, experimental production has been proceeding for some weeks; output is already running at the rate of 15,000 gas masks containers per week, and it will shortly rise to two million a month The present stock of completed containers is to be numbered by the hundred thousand, and that of face-pieces by the million. These gas masks will be stored in local depots all over the country, so that it may be possible if the need should ever arise to distribute them to the whole civil population with the greatest rapidity before an emergency is actually upon ns.

In conclusion, I would ask you to realise that this provision of gas masks, though vitally important, is only one aspect of a great system of national passive defence against air raids which is being built up all over the country the local councils are preparing schemes for the organisation of first-aid posts, rescue parties, gas detectors, squads for cleansing away gases which persist dangerously, improving the fire brigade equipment for dealing with incendiary bombs, and so forth. Members of the police and other local staffs are being trained at the Home Office anti-gas school so that they can go back and train their colleagues in their own districts. Railways, port authorities, the great public utility companies, and many other business firms are working out their own air-raid schemes. In short, the organisation of air-raid precautions is gathering impetus and momentum every day.

During the above talk a 8.8.C. representative came to the microphone to introduce a record he had made that dav from the interior of a gas chamber. He said:

When we made this record we really were standing in a concentrated cloud of gas. For this description we used one of the Home Office’s mobile gas vans, into which you walk through a covered canvas gangway which acts as an airlock. In these vans police officers of all divisions are being trained to know the ins and outs of gas masks and of poison gases. Imagine me, like some grotesque man from Mars, standing rather nervously in a corner while a police inspector prepared to heat up his capsule of concentrated gas.

From the gas chamber; If I am sounding pretty muffled it is because I am bellowing at you through a gas mask, and if 1 am talking slowly it is because it is rather difficult to get your breath between sentences. If you can hear a lot of hissing noises it is because that is the uoise of us breathing in and out as we stand here. Inspector Moser is just getting ready to light the spirit stove in the corner over which there is lying a little gelatine capsule. That’s got gas in it which is going to make us very uncomfortable unless we keep these masks on. . . . Carry on, inspector, will you? Now for it. Now it is lit. The flame’s turned up. Before the inspector lit it he pricked it with a pin to make sure that it wouldn’t burst and blister us on our skin. I can’t feel anything different from what I could feel before, but my eyes seem to be smarting a little. I think this may be from outside, where the gas was coming off the clothes of the men who had been in here just before us. It is still very hard to breathe. As 1 breathe in through this mask it closes over my face, and I find it hard to speak to you as I draw breath. In fact, I just stopped then; you probably heard it. . . . I’m not suffering any discomfort except a sort of pricking feeling round the bottom of my neck. It affects vou very slightly where the skin is tender underneath your chin and underneath your jaw at the side ; otherwise I can fool nothing. The official training of policemen at Nottingdalo Police Station, where we were to-day, is being carried out by Insnector Moser. We recorded snatches of his instruction in the gas chamber

and a dialogue between him and his pupils when he was testing their masks. Inspector: Well, you see that the capsule is melted now and the chamber is now full of tear gas. You will notice the walls and the roof of the chamber are enamelled white so that if this gas were visible you could see it quite plainly. You can see nothing at all. You may be tempted to believe that there is no gas at ail here, but there definitely is; quite enough to make life intolerable for you unless you either put on a respirator or get to a gas-free atmosphere. I am going to test you now by making you shake your heads about to see if your respirators fit properly on you. Are your eyes all right? Policeman ; Quite all right. Inspector: Then that shows that your respirator is properly fitted, because by this time, if it didn’t fit, you’d find that you could not see, your face would be streaming with tears, and you would want to get out. When the practical side of our test was over we went up to the top floor of the police station to watch a group of young, weeping; policemen sniffing at bottles containing the essences of deadly gases—smells of simple things like dry hay, garlic, and geranium; but smells which mean mustard gas, phosbene, tear gas, and the deadly Lewisite.