POISON GAS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 288, 2 November 1933, Page 12

POISON GAS.

GERMANY SECRETLY PRO-

DUCING.

It can be stated on reliable authority (says the London correspondent of the Sydney Morning Herald) that although Germany has no visible armament for offensive or defensive purposes her chemical factories are secretly producing a new poison gas with an arsenical basis, which no mask can withstand.

Official quarters in London are naturally silent, for what the Secret Service learns is never divulged. Those engaged in the British chemical industry, however, have their owii sources of information, particularly from colleagues employed under special license in foreign factories. In these circles it is admitted that Germany lias not only devised the new gas referred to. but is ahead of other nations in the manufacture of lachrymatory. gases. These are said to be so potent that one part in five million parts of air would be effective.

PRACTICAL DEMONSTRATION

A message from Brussels published in London stated that a consignment of gas bombs had been imported into Belgium from Germany. The report was that a Belgian firm, hearing that a German chemical factory was offering a supply of bombs on order, decided to obtain a test consignment. The case of bombs duly arrived labelled fireworks. When tested in a military laboratory the gas was found to be so powerful that ordinary masks were useless and investigators were forced to decamp hurriedly. It is stated by chemists here that so far as is known the new gas, like that reported as having been discovered in France, affects the whole human frame, and not merely the lungs, inflicting terrible burns. One part diluted in 10,000,000 parts of air would prove fatal in less than a minute. Factories in Cologne, Ludwigshafen, Berlin, and other places are constantly experimenting, but the French Press suggests that the deadliest gas comes from the Billwarden factory at Hamburg, where large quantities of chromium oxide and arsenical compounds are turned out for commercial purposes.

CHAINS OF FACTORIES

It is only a simple truth that in Germany, as in France, Britain, and other countries, there are chains of chemical factories now working on commercial products that could be transformed within two or three weeks into poison gas arsenals. Britain herself, compelled by the knowledge of what is taking place in other nations, is ceaselessly experimenting with poison gas and evolving antidotes, and in private laboratories of universities and factories experts are engaged secretly in this dangerous work, their discoveries seldom or never reaching the light of day. One of the most important lines of research at the moment is the development of artificial fog. It is stated that both French and British chemists have found means of creating a thick mist capable of hiding even a large city from view from the air. The best defence against bombing from aircraft, short of outlawry, is, after all, to obscure the target, and there is no more reliable agent for this than fog. Hence the great importance of this discovery.