CHAPTER XXXI

WHOLESALE SLAUGHTER BY POISONOUS GASES

CANADIAN VICTIMS -- TRENCH GAS AT YPRES -- AWFUL FORM OF SCIENTIFIC TORTURE -- REPORT OF MEDICAL EXPERT -- KIND OF GAS EMPLOYED -- ALLIES FORCED TO USE SIMILAR METHODS.

Killing by noxious gases may be, as the Germans claim, no more barbarous than slaughter by shrapnel, but it has been denounced in America as a violation of all written and unwritten codes and as a backward step toward savagery. Certainly the descriptions of responsible persons who have witnessed the pernicious work of the gas only deepens the horror with which all peace-loving citizens look upon “civilized” warfare.

The following description of the effect is told by a responsible British officer who visited some Canadians who were disabled by gas:

“The whole of England and the civilized world ought to have the truth fully brought before them in vivid detail, and not wrapped up as at present. When we got to the hospital we had no difficulty in finding out in which ward the men were, as the noise of the poor devils trying to get breath was sufficient to direct us.

CANADIAN VICTIMS

“There were about twenty of the worst cases in the ward, on mattresses, all more or less in a sitting position, strapped up against the walls. Their faces, arms, and hands were of a shiny, gray-black color. With their mouths open and leaden-glazed eyes, all were swaying slightly backward and forward trying to get breath. It was a most appalling sight. All these poor black faces struggling for life, the groaning and the noise of the efforts for breath was awful.

“There was practically nothing to be done for them except to give them salt and water and try to make them sick. The effect the gas has is to fill the lungs with a watery frothy matter, which gradually increases and rises until it fills up the whole lungs and comes to the mouth--then they die. It is suffocation, slow drowning, taking in most cases one or two days. Eight died last night out of twenty I saw, and the most of the others I saw will die, while those who get over the gas invariably develop acute pneumonia.

“It is without doubt the most awful form of scientific torture. Not one of the men I saw in the hospital had a scratch or wound. The Germans have given out that it is a rapid, painless death--the liars. No torture could be worse than to give them a dose of their own gas.”

“TRENCH GAS” AT YPRES

Asphyxiating gases seem to have been first used by the Germans in the fighting around Ypres in April, 1915. The strong northeast wind, which was blowing from the German lines across the French trenches, became charged with a sickening, suffocating odor which was recognized as proceeding from some form of poisonous gas. The smoke moved like a vivid green wall some four feet in height for several hundred yards, extending to within two hundred yards of the extreme left of the Allies’ lines. Gradually it rose higher and obscured the view from the level.

Soon strange cries were heard, and through the green mist, now growing thinner and patchy, there came a mass of dazed, reeling men who fell as they passed through the ranks. The greater number were unwounded, but they bore upon their faces the marks of agony.

The retiring men were among the first soldiers of the world whose sang-froid and courage have been proverbial throughout the war. All were reeling like drunken men.

AWFUL FORM OF SCIENTIFIC TORTURE

“The work of sending out the vapor was done from the advanced German trenches. Men garbed in a dress resembling the harness of a diver and armed with retorts or generators about three feet high and connected with ordinary hose-pipe turned the vapor loose toward the French lines. Some witnesses maintain that the Germans sprayed the earth before the trenches with a fluid which, being ignited, sent up the fumes. The German troops, who followed up this advantage with a direct attack, held inspirators in their mouths, these preventing them from being overcome by the fumes.

In addition to this, the Germans appear to have fired ordinary explosive shells loaded with some chemical which had a paralyzing effect on all the men in the region of the explosion. Some chemical in the composition of these shells produced violent watering of the eyes, so that the men overcome by them were practically blinded for some hours.

The effect of the noxious trench-gas seems to be slow in wearing away. The men come out of their violent nausea in a state of utter collapse. How many of the men left unconscious in the trenches when the French broke died from the fumes it is impossible to say, since those trenches were at once occupied by the Germans.

REPORT OF MEDICAL EXPERT

Dr. John S. Haldane, an authority on the physiology of respiration, who was sent by the British government to France to observe the effect of the gases, examined several Canadians who had been incapacitated by the gases.

“These men,” he said, “were lying struggling for breath, and blue in the face. On examining their blood with a spectroscope and by other means I ascertained that the blueness was not due to the presence of any abnormal pigment. There was nothing to account for the blueness and their struggles for air but one fact, and that was that they were suffering from acute bronchitis, such as is caused by the inhalation of an irritant gas. Their statements were to the effect that when in the trenches they had been overwhelmed by an irritant gas produced in front of the German trenches and carried toward them by a gentle breeze.

“One of the men died shortly after our arrival. A post-mortem examination showed that death was due to acute bronchitis and its secondary effect. There was no doubt that the bronchitis and accompanying slow asphyxiation was due to irritant gas.

“Captain Bertram, of the eighth Canadian battalion, who is suffering from the effects of gas and from wounds, says that from a support trench about six hundred yards from the German lines he observed the gas. He saw first of all white smoke rising from the German trenches to a height of about three feet. Then in front of the white smoke appeared a green cloud which drifted along the ground to our trenches, not rising more than about seven feet from the ground.

“When it reached our first trenches, the men in these trenches were obliged to leave, and a number of them were killed by the effects of the gas. We made a counter-attack about fifteen minutes after the gas came over, and saw twenty-four men lying dead from the effects of the gas on a small stretch of road leading from the advanced trenches to the supports. He, himself, was much affected by the gas, and felt as though he could not breathe.

“These symptoms and other facts so far ascertained point to the use by the German troops of chlorine or bromide for the purpose of asphyxiation. There also are facts pointing to the use in German shells of other irritant substances. Still, the last of these agents are not of the same brutality and barbarous character as was the gas used in the attack on the Canadians.

“The effects are not those of any of the ordinary products of combustion of explosives. On this point the symptoms described left not the slightest doubt in my mind.”

KIND OF GAS EMPLOYED

Various have been the opinions of chemists as to the kind of gas employed. Sir James Dewar, President of the Royal Institution, was of the opinion that it was liquid chlorine. Dr. F. A. Mason, of the Royal College of Science, considered it to have been bromine. Dr. Crocker, of the South-Western Polytechnic, said it may have been either carbon monoxide or liquid peroxide. Dr. W. J. Pope, Professor of Chemistry, Cambridge, and Sir E. Rutherford, Professor of Physics, Manchester University, agreed in thinking the gas to have been phosgene, a compound of carbon monoxide and chlorine, largely used in dye production in Germany.

“For some years,” stated Sir James Dewar, “Germany has been manufacturing chlorine in tremendous quantities. . . . The Germans undoubtedly have hundreds of tons available. If several tons of liquid are allowed to escape into the atmosphere, where it immediately evaporates and forms a yellow gas, and if the wind is blowing in a favorable direction, it is the easiest thing for the Germans to inundate the country with poison for miles ahead of them.

“The fact that the gas is three times heavier than air makes escape from its disastrous effects almost impossible, for it drifts like a thick fog-cloud along the surface of the ground, overwhelming all whom it overtakes.”

ALLIES FORCED TO USE SIMILAR METHODS

Of the German attack on the allied front near Ypres, Secretary of War, Earl Kitchener, speaking in the House of Lords on May 18, said:

“In this attack the enemy employed vast quantities of poisonous gases, and our soldiers and our French allies were utterly unprepared for this diabolical method of attack, which undoubtedly had been long and carefully prepared.”

It was at this point that Earl Kitchener announced the determination of the Allies to resort to similar methods of warfare.

“The Germans,” said Earl Kitchener, “have persisted in the use of these asphyxiating gases whenever the wind favored or other opportunity occurred, and His Majesty’s government, no less than the French government, feel that our troops must be adequately protected by the employment of similar methods, so as to remove the enormous and unjustifiable disadvantage which must exist for them if we take no steps to meet on his own ground the enemy who is responsible for the introduction of this pernicious practice.”