POISON GAS WARFARE.

Taranaki Daily News, 4 August 1934, Page 6

POISON GAS WARFARE.

Talk of war and predictions of impending wars having grown apace in the last few years there is now a general scurry on the part of most nations to arm themselves suitably against potential attacks. The army receives comparatively little attention these days, and the navy not a great deal more. Most nations are concentrating on an efficient air force, believing that superiority in this department will be the deciding factor in the next conflict, and the reading public, has been more or less prepared to expect wholesale attacks on towns and cities by aircraft armed with poison gas. So strong is this feeling in France that thousands of civilians are providing themselves with gas masks, and in England the authorities are experimenting with making dwelling houses proof against aerial attacks. A recent issue of The Lancet analysed the various poison gases into their four types, and illustrated how each could be dealt with. Medical journals abroad, the Lancet pointed out, are laying increasing emphasis on the desirability of practitioners themselves with the methods warfare. So much for poison gas. But there is a wider issue than all these preparations to resist gas attack. As the Round Table recently stated, “the new technique of war is being built upon the idea of terror, and not on that of slaughter combined with material destruction” ... It stands to reason that the slaughterings and destruction that characterised the old technique of war will be subordinated to this one object of the new technique—the maddening of the enemy. As in the actual warfare so it is with the condition of a nation that leads up to a potential war. Nowadays no European Government dare declare war unless it has the support of its people, and the only important factor creating that support is fear. Whereas it is courting disaster not to be prepared against eventualities, it is extremely desirable that people should not allow themselves to be stampeded by scaremongering statements into an attitude of mind that accepts war as inevitable.