THE DEW OF DEATH.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 8513, 5 August 1921, Page 8 (Supplement)

THE DEW OF DEATH.

SECRET OF WORLD MASTERY.

POISON GAS IN NEXT WAR. U.S. GENERAL’S AMAZING REVELATIONS. Horrors of the Great War reached their climax with the use of poison gas projected far .behind the front lines by means of gas filled shells. Yet terrible though the results were both for the fighting forces and civil population, they pale into insignificance beside the picture of the gas Avar of the future painted in the accompanying article. Literally, “The mastery of the Avord rests in the Dew of Death.”

Hurricanes of steel smashed German poA\ r er on land and sea. The dew of death will paralyse and destroy the lunging battalions of a future assault against civilisation. Wars of the future will be dreadful struggles, directed by middleaged and elderly persons in spectacles sitting in laboratories and loosing upon fields of battle, battle fleets and great helpless cities miasmas of death that not only destroy the body but wreck the mind through fear, sheer terror of the mysterious, the unknown. Compounders of volatile, lethal poisons, poisons that will fall as dew from the clouds, literally a dew of death; poisons that will be drifted across great spaces like fever murk from a swamp; poisons that will be discharged in shells from pneumatic guns, furtively, silently, will contend for the mastery of the Avorld. These will be chemists’ wars, if Avars must come again, says Edwin C. Hill, in the “New York Herald,” and the simple truth is that the mind of man is not yet able to picture the horrors that will be released. Great cities, an ocean apart from their country’s enemy and tranquil in fancied security, far out of reach of the longest range gun, will stir from sleep in the night to the agony of their people, as from unseen poison ships, circling above them in the dark, dews of death fall to blind and burn and paralyse. Fortresses, manned by the most powerful ordnance man hits been able to perfect, will lie helpless under this gentle frightful rain. Armies with banners will be levelled to the dust, no longer armies, but masses of sightless, pain-crazed human beings, incapable* of motion, incapable of thought.

NOTHING SO TERRIBLE.

In all the thousands of years that men have schemed to slay other men for greed, ambition, or the love of Avomen, nothing even remotely so terrible has come into warfare as the discovery and coldly scientific application of poison gases as a weapon. The possibilities are absolutely illimitable. There are 200,000 chemicals known to man, and as yet only five per cent, of this vast number has been used for experimentation. Yet with the feAv discoveries made in the five per cent, of employed in the Great War the casualties Avere terrific. The Surgeon-General of the United States Army reports that almost one man out of every three that entered the hospitals of the American Expeditionary Force as a battle casualty Avas suffering from enemy gas. Yet from 1915, when the Germans first drifted a poison cloud across the field of Ypres surrendered more than three years later, they developed only three per cent, efficiency. “Had they got up to fifty per cent.,” said Brigadier-General Amos A. Fries, Chief of Chemical Warfare Service, U.S.A., “Ave Avouid have had to come home-—those of us left.” At Ypres in 1915, when the Kaiser’s hosts added the new terror to Avarlare they had the world in their hands had they folloAved up the shocking surprise their poison waves sent through the British and the Canadians—but they did not folloAv it up.

Does any one think that the vision of whole cities thrown into helpless agony by invisible airships dripping poison is too fantastic? Nevertheless, that is the cool and carefully weighed opinion of General Fries and of his aids in the Chemical Warfare Service.

If the Phillipines are ever attacked by an enemy it will be a gas attack. General Fries believes, and the measure of his opinion in indicated in the folloAving interesting memorandum he sent to Major-Gen-eral Leonard Wood:

TAKING THE FLILIPPINES.

“Japs. Can Take Philippine Islands Avith Gas.—Let us assume Japan has decided to make Avar upon the United States. Her first objective is the Philippine Islands. American troops and fortifications are concentrated on the island of Corregidor, at the mouth of Manila Bay.

“Japan, having decided on war, will seize a small bay within 100 miles of Corregidor. Her air force will fly there by way of Formosa, and land in the little harbour picked out. She will carry in her fleet 100 tons of mustard gas.

“A force of fifty ’planes, each carrying one ton of mustard gas in a simple tank, Avill leave at night for Corregidor. A half-hour later they Avill be over the island and will be sprinkling it thoroughly with mustard gas from one end to the other.

“Within forty-eight hours the place will be practically untenable for anybody. Thus will pass the Philippine Islands into the hands of the Japanese. “The next step will be just to hold the Philippine Islands and wait for results. It is perfectly certain that the attack would be just as successful against the Hawaiian Islands unless the Americans have a superior air force that can keep the invaders atvay.

“The CaroPne and Marshall Islands, including the Island of Yap, over Avhich the Japanese are to have a mandate, would afford numerous small harbours which v ould be ideal landing places for aeroplanes.

“In addition to an air force, the Americans must haA-e a sufficient fleet within striking distance of the Hawaiian Islands to prevent the Japanese from seizing one of those slands as an air base If not, the Japanese can seize a small island ■ itb a landing place for their airplanes, and with a fleet of aircraft they could force the evacuation of ■'he American forts in Hawaii by sprinkling gas. just as in the case of Corregidor. "This is merely an outl : ne of the

method of attack. And dream. The question again such an attack j s * impossible without a force.”

In preparing this etx* frank memorandum, Genet? “got right down to brass Z he says, believing that ? would be served by very real danger. 0-4

“Take New York city j l8) the General. “New York A niftcent. For the sake of? let us assume that the Unit2 navy, allowed to deteri ora , suffe/ed defeat or that th e fleet had been out-manoeu v a cunning foe. Airplanes »! developed so that even now? be possible for great squad? leap the Atlantic and sprj cities with burning poison “We know that ten tons ot tard gas will desolate a sqi! and make life impossible? square mile. Suppose a S 100 poison sprinkles swoon New York in the night W feated or evaded the America fleet. Death, feat would most certainly rei the millions of the great ctl dreds of thousands would be burned horribly, driven in Sa terror.

“There is still talk i n pk chemical Avarfare may be 1 by agreement. It can’t be" you can abolish chemical agreement you can abolish* by agreement.

“We have developed gases that may play a tri part in warfare. One is cloud gas, transmitted fro a smoke candles. The old cloud gas required the but cylinders in deep trenches ing the work of many men j days in order to prepare This method is obsolete, j ern method is to heat a soli solid gas, contained in holder resembling a squat, ioned lantern, is released fuse is lighted. It is safe proof. It may be crushed or punctured with bullets harm being done to the pen ing it. These candles may light or very heavy.

“The other new thing « gas, the effect of which i s burns that are severe and to heal. If three drops of can be absorbed into the sh cause death in most cases

lesser quantities down to at a drop will put every man in the hospital. This gas common mustard gas, with s the skin, can be sprinkled! planes in practically unlimii titles. Entire fields, forests and railroad centres can be with this Dew of Death. Mustard gas, which is hi aIAA r ays hangs low upon the makes trenches and dugouti ous. It burns any soft tit moisture heightens its effa breathe it is like breathing If the British had had 5091 it in 1918 they would hare the German drive in the! miles. “Chlor-acetophenons, carta and acetic acid is a tear gu ness to the mere edge of it causes blindness from tears. This is the gas ibil used in the future to break and it should be a trernendo to every police department are helpless Avhen they « We are at Avork now upon stance even more powerful tear gas developed by ihei “What we are after isi will be colourless, taste’ess, that will kill instantly wh(A of men, and without the Avarning of its coming. If is found, and I believe wes it is impossible to see how could stand against it.”