CHAPTER VII

FORBIDDEN WEAPONS

1. Asphyxiating gases.

2. Tear-producing gases.

3. “Gaz-vésicant.”

4. Liquid fire.

=1. Asphyxiating gases.= During the present war Germany has ransacked the arcana of science for the means of destroying her enemies. Those to which she resorted had been forbidden and condemned as belonging to barbarous ages by all the conventions to which she had been a party, and by all the agreements that she had signed.

Asphyxiating gases were used for the first time against the British troops on the Yser. The corrosive vapours of chlorine are fatal to all who have been sufficiently exposed to them, and when first directed against an unprepared and unsuspecting enemy, their effects were terrible.

Fortunately the use of these gases is possible only when the wind is favourable and the weather dry; and as the coincidence of these conditions is exceptional, especially in the north of France, the Allies had time to invent protective masks and distribute them to their troops.

The models adopted can be slipped on easily and quickly even in the dark and are effective for several hours. Every soldier is provided with one.

At the start, when gas-offensives were still in the experimental stage, the German attacks were limited to single discharges, which were more or less rapidly dissipated by the wind and were quite harmless to adversaries equipped with good masks.

But shortly afterward, when their weapons were turned against them, and their trenches were “gassed” by the Allies, and the Germans discovered by experience that a mask causes great fatigue and even exhaustion if its use is greatly prolonged (since it interferes so much with the breathing), they altered their method of procedure and began to take advantage of favourable winds to launch successive waves of gas, in order to wear their enemies out by keeping them in their masks as long as possible.

Next, as the approach of the whitish gas-cloud was easily visible and was always promptly signalled by the lookouts, the German scientists, in an effort to catch their adversaries unprepared, modified their original formulas and produced colourless gases, which are more difficult but by no means impossible to detect.

=2. Tear-producing gases.= The next step was to find some means of nullifying as much as possible the protection of respiratory apparatus, so the _good_ Germans invented the tear-producing gases which, in spite of the special glasses that have been added to the masks, rapidly interfere with vision and place the victim _hors de combat_.

The Allies were forced, in self-defence, to resort to similar means.

=3. “Gaz-vésicant.”= A new gas invented also by the Germans has made its apparition on the Western Front. It is known in France under the name of _gaz-vésicant_; it acts after a few hours only; it is colourless and inodorous; it destroys all the tissues as thoroughly as they would be under the action of sulphuric acid.

We have mentioned the preponderant use of asphyxiating shells in neutralization fire. All our armies are now provided with a variety of gas-generating apparatus, some of which have given excellent results as regards accuracy and rapidity of discharge.

There is another reason why the Germans should be unable to congratulate themselves on this invention. Westerly and north-westerly winds are more frequent in France than easterly winds, so that gas attacks can be made oftener by the Allies than by their enemies.

=4. Liquid fire (_flammenwerfer_).= When neither guns nor gases fulfilled their expectations and they saw that the “furor Teutonica” embodied in the mass-attacks of the best soldiers of the Kaiser was powerless to break through the Franco-British lines, the Germans resorted to the use of liquid fire.

In favourable weather before the attacks are launched, men in heavy bullet-proof steel breastplates are sent forward, carrying on their backs reservoirs very similar to those used on farms to sprinkle sulphate on the crops. Through nozzles connected with these reservoirs they throw by the force of compressed air streams of burning liquid to a distance of fifty to sixty yards. The dense clouds of black smoke produced by the liquid fire mask its bearers from the sight of the enemy.

Liquid fire, especially at the beginning, when the Allies were unprepared for this mode of attack, rendered good service to the Germans by enabling them to take some advanced trenches at small cost to themselves.

The present results are less brilliant. Grenades have done the work against the mail-clad bearers of _flammenwerfer_ that rifles or machine-guns could not. When a bearer falls, the masterless nozzle does not always continue to spit its flames in the direction of the enemy, but is often turned against the other bearers, and even against the very troops whose advance it is intended to protect, thus spreading great disorder in their ranks.

Recently, in order to compensate for the decreasing morale of their troops the Germans have resorted more and more to the use of _flammenwerfer_.

The Allies have in their turn adopted similar apparatus and the Germans have more than once had the opportunity to realize that it is as useful in the defensive as in the offensive.

Gas apparatus and _flammenwerfer_ should be as portable and as handy as possible.

They should never be operated by other than specially trained troops, fully instructed and thoroughly skilled.

In France detachments of sappers or miners are entrusted with these devices.