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Sun (Christchurch), Volume II, Issue 378, 27 April 1915, Page 6

The stink-pot is an ancient weapon of warfare, and was probably in use long before the Roiflafts took to hurling offensively-smelling barrels of combustibles upon the enemy from their ba,llistas. The Chinese, with their superior knowledge of explosives- and chemistry generally, had made a fine art of the stink-pot in warfare while yet Mediaeval Europe was making use of such clumsy methods as the pouring of boiling oil and blazing tar upon beseigers. But though there is little new in ideas under the sun, there is much that is new in method and in improvement on old ideas. It has remained for the most scientific nation of these years, and the most callous, to reinforce the stink-pot idea with all the ingenuity of modern science and make it an effective weapon even'in these days of high explosives and long-range guns. The fumes from most high explosives are poisonous and suffocating, but German science, by using shells discharging heavy chlorine gas, has achieved an effect that is more than local. They have been able to build a wall of dense poisonous gas which acts for a while as an almost impenetrable barrier to the enemy, and at the same time .acts as a covering shield behind which their own troops may retire. It is legitimate warfare, no doubt, but its ruthless action once more shows how science, by being devoted to the destruction of human beings, is making warfare impossible, because of the ghastly effect of modern mechanism. Men no longer march to light hand to hand against men, but march in bodies against implacable machines that carry death for miles. They march to death through! clouds of poison, never seeing their fellow enemy. As long as a memory remains of the terrific carnage caused by the ingenious and intricate mechanisms of war, there will be no war, for the idea of marching reasoning human fiesh against monstrous machines spitting death in a hail of lead or clouds of poison will appeal only as a menus of committing national suicide en masse. It is the one hopeful aspect of the perfection of scientific destruction.