From ‘War by Poison’, The Spectator, 8 May 1915:
THE nature of the gases by means of which the Germans have won undoubted local successes is gradually being ascertained, and the more we know of the gases the more brutal does the use of them appear. At first we heard them spoken of simply as asphyxiating gases, a description which suggested that men were overcome by them as men are rendered unconscious by fumes in a mine or a sewer. But the information now coming from the hospitals proves that the Germans have not scrupled to resort to a truly diabolical use of chemical science, and to discharge at their opponents vapours which cause not merely temporary physical incapacity, but agonizing suffering and permanent injury.
Those who do not die from the gases seem to become chronic invalids, and those who die after leaving the field reach their end in slow agony. The papers have published letters from British officers at the front which are even more painful reading than the details sent by Sir John French. It is said that the lungs of the men who have been gassed “are turned to liquid.” They sit up and fight for breath, and the doctors say that they have the appearance of men on the point of death from drowning. The Germans, in short, have not hesitated to use contrivances which poison their enemies.
By the consent of all men who are not savages, the use of poison is ruled out in war, and has been prohibited by custom for centuries. And war by poison is being practised not only in Europe; in German South-West Africa the Union troops, as we are informed by a Colonial Office Paper, have come across many wells poisoned with arsenic. A German order was, moreover, intercepted which gave instructions for conveying disease germs into the wells. The facts are not denied by the German officers, who excuse themselves on the ground that warnings were placed on the poisoned wells. The Union troops, however, did not find any of these warnings. “Poisoned wells”! The very phrase calls up visions of warfare with the wildest and most fanatical tribesmen in tho world, but not with the inhabitants of the most highly organized country in Europe. Such devilry is, of course, a sign of desperation. Winning armies do not fall back on poison.
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