THE RIDDLE OF 111E RHINE.*
A HIGHLY interesting account of the use of poison-gas in the War has been written by Major Lefebure, who served with a gas- unit on the British front and then acted a s liaison officer with the Allies in respect of chemical warfare. He draws a distinction between the " persistent " substances like mustard-gas, which made an area inaccessible for days, and " non-persistent " substances such as phosgene, which rapidly volatilized and dis- appeared. The Germans, who had, he thinks, been working at the subject before the War, had the initiative and achieved two great surprises. Using clouds of chlorine, they broke the French line north-west of Ypres on April 22nd, 1915, causing many casualties, and repeated the experiment at the cost of the Canadians two days later. The second surprise was the use of mustard-gas in shells at Nieuport in July, 1917. Our
men were prepared for poison-gas, but not for a gas which had theeffeot of temporarily blinding them besides blistering the skin.
In neither ease did the surprise give the enemy any considerable
tactical advantage, but he was encouraged to go on and make the fullest possible use of gas. The Allies retaliated, first with
chlorine clouds, which seem at Loos and then on the Somme to have done a good deal of damage, and then with gas shells fired from the small mortar called the Livens projector. The French manufactured quantities of mustard-gas, which they called Yperite, and we did the same in the last two months of the War, much to the annoyance of the enemy, whose troops sometimes became panic-stricken at their losses. But the author maintains that the enemy always had the advantage, because in their numerous large chemical works they could quickly produce quantities of any noxious compound that might be required.
For many years before the War the German chemical manu- facturers, organized in a trust called the " I.G."—" Interessen Gemeinschaft," or " Community of Interests "—had sought to establish a world monopoly in organic chemicals and had very nearly succeeded. Hence, though the Allies soon found out the gases and other substances that they needed for a counter- attack, they were unable to manufacture these substances on a large scale as rapidly as could be wished.
Major Lefobure has convinced himself that this state of things will recur if the Allies do not take the question seriously, and that we shall then be at the mercy of the German Gas Corps whenever the next war breaks out. He commends the American War Department for showing a lively interest in
chemical warfare, especially since the Armistice. He asserts that the German manufacturers have resumed their efforts to destroy all foreign competitors, and that they have fooled the Allied Commissioners whose duty it is to suppress poison-gas factories. Ho says that the American delegate was virtually expelled from the synthetic ammonia works at Oppau—recently destroyed by an explosion the precise causes of which are unknown, though it is suspected that the directors were con- cealing stocks of high explosives. The Oppau factory was heavily subsidized by the German Government :-
" Here is a new weapon whose exploitation demands research and large scale production. The former cannot be checked, and the latter cannot be destroyed or suitably controlled to prevent conversion for war purposes. Yet three distinct features of this weapon make the disarmament need imperative. In the first place, everything points to chemical disarmament ' as a key measure to control the large scale use of all other weapons. The aggressive agent in war is the chemical. All weapons, except the bayonet, depend upon it. In the second place, chemical warfare is itself so overwhelmingly important that it is farcical to contemplate any disarmament scheme which does not, first and foremost, tackle this question. Thirdly, no nation ever held a more complete monopoly for any weapon than did Germany for chemical warfare. Yet the levelling up process which occurred during the War, tending towards armament equilibrium, towards removal of enormous disparity, failed to touch the chemical arm. Germany, through her guilty exorcise of the new weapon, has still further increased her enormous manufacturing superiority for war."
We gather that Major Lefebure would, on the one hand, destroy some of the German ammonia plants and other works which, he thinks, Germany does not need for peaceful purposes ; and on the other hand establish and maintain dye Industries—regardless of expense—in the Allied countries. There is much to be said for building up our own dye industries,
and, as Sir Henry Wilson suggests in an introduction, for studying the subject from a military standpoint. But Major Lefebure's
• The Riddle of the Rhine : Chemical Strategy in Peace and War. By Victor Lefebnre. With an Introduction by Field-Marshal Biz Henry Wilson. London: f ILIA ed- add.
proposal to treat some of the German chemical works as the Germans treated the great French chemical factory at Chaulny will not commend itself to sober people. If we are to destroy German chemical works because they may be used in the future to produce mustard-gas or something worse, we ought logically to destroy German steel works, and especially Essen, because they may hereafter make long-range guns with which to shell London from the Rhine. Indeed, it would seem to follow that we ought to suppress the German people once for all, inasmuch as they may be plotting evil things against this country. Major Lefebure, like our French friends, is too logical. So long as wo give reasonable encouragement to our own chemical industries we need not fear the malevolent German chemists who aro supposed to spend their days and nights in devising new methods of destroying human life. After all the Germans, with their elaborate preparations and their manufacturing resources, did not win the late War by the use of poison-gas. Why should we suppose that they will do better next time, when the clement of surprise will be lacking ?
Previous page
