The Last Weapon

U.S. chemical-warfare experts believe that gas will be widely used on the battlefronts of this war. Their only uncertainty is when & where. They even know how it will be used. The airplane is a ready means of spreading gas quickly over the greatest area. And all the belligerents are ready, Axis and United Nations alike. The U.S. Army kept its counsel last week, but the citizenry could be sure that elaborate preparations have been made for chemical warfare.

The Army says only that gas masks have been supplied to every soldier sent into a potential combat zone. Gas warfare is humane, say the military theorists. As proof, they cite the fact that in World War I gas caused less suffering from wounds than other weapons. Of the 1,300,000 men gassed, only 90,000 were fatalities, and complete recoveries predominated. (Of the 28,000,000 men wounded by other weapons, 8,200,000 died.) And gas is quick and effective, they argue. War's objective is to immobilize the enemy and make him sue for peace. What quicker agent than gas? Some military observers believe the Germans could have won World War I at Ypres on April 22, 1915, when they first introduced gas in large-scale modern combat, when the stunned British and French Colonial troops choked, fell and fled as clouds of chlorine boiled into their trenches. But the Germans did not or could not follow up their first quick triumph. Every military man worth his salt knows that all such talk is only high theory, that poison gas is the most fearful horror of war, that it will be the weapon of last resort, when all other known military means have failed to force a decision. Masks on Frontiers. The outlook for civilians, as usual, is not rosy.

A trial run of 5,000,000 noncombatant gas masks has been ordered. But to equip all war workers and stay-at-homes in the potential target areas -- the 300-mile-wide strips along the three coasts, and 33 other strategic areas --would require 55,000,000 masks.

Said OCDirector James M. Landis: No plans have been made to equip the whole U.S. urban population with masks, as has been done in Britain, "until the present frontiers change." And the whole foul problem hung in delicate balance: the civilian frontier might not change for the duration. Axis as well as Ally feared the terrible retaliation. Alabama's Senator Lister Hill demanded masks for all industrial workers-- and soon. The Army had established civil defense courses on five campuses (Amherst, Texas A. & M., Stanford, Florida, Maryland)--and the courses featured gas instruction. Good Old Mustard. U.S. armed forces publicly recognize 16 chemical warfare agents. None is new. There are seven poison gases, five smoke agents for screening, and the trustworthy incendiary, thermite. The poison gases: mustard, lewisite, ethyldichlorarsine, chlorpicrin, diphosgene, phosgene and chlorine. Mustard gas is popular with high commands. It rises, colorless, from a soupy, machine-oil sort of liquid, burns a man inside & out.

Lewisite, another blister gas, was developed toward the close of World War I in the U.S., is now a favorite of the Japs. Deadliest gas of World War I was phosgene: a couple of good whiffs mean a painful and almost certain death. The U.S. has no part in any treaty outlawing gas warfare.

Britain, France, Italy, Japan and the U.S. devised such a treaty in 1921, but the French did not ratify. A similar protocol initialed in 1925 was not approved by either the U.S.--or Japan.

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