ASPHYXIATING GAS

any gas poisonous to organic being, but more especially in reference to gases used for destructive purposes in warfare. Gas, as a military weapon, was first used on a big scale by the Germans in the Great War, but the practice was known among the Chinese far back in the beginning of their historic period. Chemicals were enclosed in gla or earthenware pots and, when thrown and shattered, liberated gases which at least rendered the enemy unconscious. ‘These devices have been more commonly employed by the Chinese at sea, especially by pirates, and were generally known among seamen as ‘stink pots.’ Noxious gases were later used by the French, as late as 1850. During the Boer War the British employed shells charged with lyddite which, on bursting, would disable the foe by its overpowering fumes, and during the Ru o-Japanese War, in 1904, both sides employed asphyxiating gases. The use of such weapons, however, even among military men, was much deprecated as tending toward uncivilized warfare, being regarded much as the poisoning of wells had been, or the maiming of prisoners. At the Hague Peace Conference, held in 1899, the practice was especially condemned, and no military establishment of any civilized nation was thought to include the use of gas as an arm of its service. During the earlier battles of the World War, therefore, gases were not used by either side. It was not till the second battle of Ypres that the Germans suddenly swept the enemy trenches with vast clouds of poisonous gases that military men had to face their use as a » reality. Nor did the fumes from the German trenches merely disable the enemy; a large proportion of the men subjected to this new feature of modern warfare were not only killed, but suffered the most intense agonies before expiring. A violent protest was, of course, immediately made by the Allied nations, to which the Germans replied, through the German legation in Berne,. Switzerland, that the French were, as a matter of fact, already p. ing to use asphyxiating gases, and that the German -armies had only forestalled them. This charge the French were unable to deny, but they replied that the gases they had intended using were of a le deadly character. As the Germans refused to desist from the use of gases, the Allies also adopted them as ® weapon, and during the rest of the World War they became a recognized means of combat for both sides. The deadline of gases was somewhat checked at a later period by the use of gas masks, a device which was fitted over the head of the soldier in the front line trench, enabling him to strain the air nece ary for breathing through material chemically treated, but in spite of this precaution the fatalities from ‘gasing’ formed a large proportion of the total. Of those who recovered from a le er degree of asphyxiation, the lungs remained in a very delicate state, rendering them especially subjective to attack from tuberculosis. ¥.), mountain, Italy, 6420 ft.; Garibaldi wounded and captured here, 1862.