CHEMICAL WARFARE.

Manawatu Times, Volume XLVI, Issue 1976, 18 November 1921, Page 4

CHEMICAL WARFARE.

‘‘Chemical warfare” formed one of the subjects touched on by Sir Edward Thorpe, in his inaugural address before the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, which was held at Edinburgh in September. He asserted that April 25th, 1915, ‘‘which saw the clouds of the asphyxiating chlorine slowly wafted from the German trenches towards the lines of the Allies, witnessed one of the most bestial episodes in the history of the Great War. The world stood aghast at such a spectacle of barbarism.” Such warfare became part of the settled practice of the enemy, and during the three succeeding years, from April, 1915, to September, 1918, no fewer than eighteen different forms of poison—gases, liquids, solids —were employed by the Germans. “Reprisals became inevitable, and for the greater part of three years we had the sorry spectacle of the leading nations of the world flinging at one another the most deadly products that chemical knowledge could suggest and technical skill contrive.”