POISON GAS IN WAR.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20244, 2 May 1929, Page 13

POISON GAS IN WAR.

"ABOLITION IMPOSSIBLE."

BRITISH EXPERT'S OPINION. [from our own correspondent,] CAPETOWN. March 22. Should poison .gas be abolished from warfare? was one of>the questions put to Professor Arthur Smithells, president of the Institute of Chemistry, on his arrival in South Africa. Professor Smithells held the rank of lieutenant-colonel during the war, and was in charge of the anti-gas training of troops from 1916 to 1919.

When his Attention was drawn to a statement recently made that Germany was prepared to forswear the use of poison gas in any future warfare that she might enter into Professor Smithells expressed the opinion that gas would never be divorced from modern warfare. "All that I can say," he said, "is that when I left the army in 1919 I felt that the only service I should be called upon to perform in the future in connection with warfare was raise my voice against any suggestion that gas warfare could be abolished.

"No doubt if I were in England at the present I would reluctantly come out of my retirement to reassert the immovable conviction of those who were connected with gas warfare that this', arm, however barbarous it may seem, can never be removed from modern warfare.

It must continue as 'long as war is recognised as the medium for settling putes between the nations of the world."