GAS IN WARFARE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20272, 4 June 1929, Page 12

GAS IN WARFARE

Sir, —Your correspondents whA ha \-<i takefi me to task for what I said about: the proposed gas chamber at- Devonpovfc have been a little wide of the mark. I was not speaking about the last war and I did not say that "the front line .was often the safest place when a gas attack was on." What P*did say was that experts had said that in the next war ;ti might be so. I said that'a small chamber such as is proposed would be almost us<;j less, because if gas were used it would be used against the population, aticl no mask yet devised is a real safeguard against some of the gases which are now known. Up to a few years ago the great competition in preparation for war was between armour-piercing shell and .shellresisting armour; the modern competition is between poison gas and anti-gas masks or shelters. The investigating committed appointed by the League of Nations, reporting in 1924, said: "The problem of tha protection of the civil population remains to be solved." A prominent chemist had said: "My only advice-to the non-com-batant in the next war is to either run: to the front-line trenches or climb to tiio top of a skyscraper and stay there untd the war is over." These quotations aid taken from a pamphlet issued .by the Car* negie Endowment for International Peace, by no means the first- publication onthia subject. This pamphlet quotes recom:nen< dations issued by the International Red Cross last year, which show the length adequate protective measures would have go. It quotes also several competent military authorities to the effe'et that; evil as were the results of poison gas in the last war it was as a child's gamo compared with what is known of gases now and their uses, and they all seem to agree that there is as yet no adequa'o safeguard against it except the abolition of war. Tom Bloodwoetji.