J. B. S. Haldane

“ They can all, I think, be abused, but none perhaps is always evil; and many, like mustard gas, when we have got over our first not very rational objection to them, turn out to be, on the whole, good. If it is right for me to fight my enemy with a sword, it is right for me to fight him with mustard gas: if the one is wrong, so is the other. But I have no sympathy whatever for Mr. Facing-both-ways [83] when he says that, though he is prepared on occasion to fight, he will not use these nasty new-fangled weapons. ”

“ A few of my hearers hold the view that, while war in itself is a noble occupation, the use of poisonous gas is an innovation as cruel as it is unsoldierly. The majority are probably pacifists in the sense that they prefer almost any peace to almost any war, support the League of Nations or other devices for the prevention of international strife, and look askance at preparations for [3] future warfare, more particularly for future chemical warfare. ”

“ Of course, if we could utilize the forces which we now know to exist inside the atom, we should have such capacities for destruction that I do not know of any agency other than divine intervention which would save humanity from complete and peremptory annihilation. ”

“ We cannot make apparatus small enough to disintegrate or fuse atomic nuclei, any more than we can make it large enough to reach to the moon. We can only bombard them with particles of which perhaps one in a million hit, which is like firing keys at a safe-door from a machine-gun a mile away in an attempt to open it. We do occasionally open it, but the process is very uneconomical. It may be asked why we cannot bring our machine-gun nearer, or improve our aim. To do this we should require to construct apparatus on the same infinitesimal scale as the structure of the chemical atom. ”

“ Apparently [72] it took five months for the British Army to realize that gas-poisoning did not necessarily mean poisoning through the stomach.
If, then, in future wars we are to avoid gross mismanagement in high places, and panic and stupidity among the masses, it is essential that everyone should learn a little elementary science, that politicians and soldiers should not be proud of their ignorance of it, that ordinary men and women should not be ashamed or afraid of knowing something of the working of their own bodies. ”

“ We are, perhaps, inclined to underestimate the potentialities of town-bombing with high explosive and incendiary bombs. In London, for example, there were never too many big fires started at any given time for the fire-brigades to deal with. An attack by ten or twenty times as many aeroplanes as ever bombed London simultaneously might well ring round a given area fairly completely with wrecked streets or burning houses, in which case most of the buildings and a good proportion of the inhabitants would perish. ”

“ I claim, then, that the use of mustard gas in war on the largest possible scale would render it less expensive of life and property, shorter, and more dependent on brains rather than numbers. We are often told the exact opposite, that it will make it more barbarous and indecisive, and lead to the wiping out of the population of whole cities. ”

“ Mustard gas is a very different thing. It was never used to force a decision by breaking the enemy’s lines, but to cause him casualties and deny him the use of ground. For, after a given area has been well sprayed with dichlorethyl sulphide from bursting shells for some time, it is death to occupy it without a mask, and the vapour may blister the skin, while anyone touching the ground will be certain of a very serious blister. Someone placed a drop of the liquid on the chair of the director of the British chemical warfare department. ”

“ For this reason trained physiologists had to be employed. An ordinary soldier would probably restrain his tendency to gasp, cough and throw himself about if he were working a machine-gun in a battle, but could not do so in a laboratory experiment with nothing to take his mind off his own feelings. An experienced physiologist has more self-control. It was also necessary to see if one could run or work hard in the respirators, so we had a wheel of some kind to turn by hand in the gas chamber, not to mention doing fifty-yard sprints in respirators outside. ”

“ We do not know what type of scientific knowledge will be needed: we can be certain that some type will be. The British are a tired people: they like to rest “in breathless quiet after all their ills,” and to pin their faith to the promises of leaders whose eyes are fixed on the past. ”

“ In the Great War mustard gas and sensory irritant smokes were not used as the principal weapons of attack or defence, because the smokes would not incapacitate everyone in a given area, though they would make them keep their respirators on. Mustard gas, on the other hand, could make any area absolutely untenable by the defenders, but the vapour persisted for so many days that it could not be occupied by the attackers either. ”

“ If one goes to what is, perhaps, the opposite extreme from Russia, one finds the army of the world’s most democratic nation, Australia, commanded by a Jew, Monash, and notes with interest that the Germans regarded the Australian troops as, on the whole, the most formidable, man for man, of all their opponents. ”

“ Was there anything in the gas-bomb scare? In the first place, many otherwise well-informed people have very erroneous views as to the poisonousness of gases. Gases are dangerous in the laboratory or factory if they kill without giving warning by odour and irritation; but gases of this kind, such as carbon monoxide and hydrogen arsenide, have to be present, in order to kill, in concentrations which cannot practically be produced in the open. ”

“ The reasons why explosives are more likely to be effective than poison on a town are as follows. Houses are far more vulnerable to explosives than earthworks, and do far more damage to their occupants in collapsing, besides being inflammable. And, on the other hand, they contain far more refuges which are nearly gas-proof. A shut room on a first or second floor would be nearly proof against gas released in the neighbourhood if it had not got a lighted fire to drag contaminated air from outside into it. ”

“ And yet evaporation is so slow that ground contaminated by the liquid may remain dangerous for a week. Mustard gas caused more casualties to the British than all other chemical weapons put together.
Such are the weapons which chemistry has given us. It is often asked why [14] chemists cannot produce something which will put our foes comfortably to sleep and allow us to take them prisoners. The answer is that such substances exist, but that in small amounts they are harmless, in large amounts fatal. It is only over a moderate range of concentrations that their effect is merely stupefying. ”

“ An educated man knows enough of science, for example, to be able to distinguish a gas from a smoke, or a Grindell-Matthews from a Marconi, [63] even if he is not thoroughly versed in the kinetic theory of gases or the laws governing radiation through the ether. Educated men are rather rare. It will be worth while giving some examples of how our uneducated politicians and soldiers failed to adjust themselves to the scientific thought of their contemporaries. ”

“ We have not yet made a scientific study of the causes of war, and, until we do, may expect more wars. If we are to have more wars, I prefer that my country should be on the winning side. That is why I am speaking on warfare to my fellow-countrymen. ”

“ The Turks were seldom capable of organizing a combined attack by any number greater than a battalion, or a shoot by anything larger than a battery. Yet small groups of them fought very well, and their individual guns made very good shooting. But gas-warfare demands organization, both of attack and defence—attack, because one tries to keep up a certain concentration of vapour over a whole large area rather than to knock out given groups of men; defence, because respirators and discipline in wearing them must be perfect. ”

“ As to which of us is justified, I would suggest that it is more likely to-day that poisonous gas will be used against British soldiers or civilians in future wars than it was in 1912 that Britain would be invaded by the Germans.
We have seen that a case can be made out for gas as a weapon on humanitarian grounds, based on the very small proportion of killed to casualties from gas in the war, and especially during its last year. ”

“ More respectable in every way are the candid reactionaries, like Lord Cecil, who believe in their hearts that in abandoning traditional religion of the medieval type for scientific thought, man has definitely chosen the wrong path, and who fight with their eyes open against its application. ”

“ The chemical and physiological ideas which underlie gas warfare require a certain effort to understand, and they do not arise in the study of a sport, as is the case with those underlying shooting and motor transport. ”

“ But it is quite easy to show that the destructive and horrible nature of modern warfare is due, not to the weapons used, but largely to the other applications of science which constitute the material basis of our civilization. ”

“ Moreover, civilians could, and would, rapidly evacuate an area which has been heavily soaked with mustard gas, whereas soldiers [59] have to stay on at the risk of their lives.
Gas-bombs would certainly be far less effective than high-explosives on a town whose inhabitants were provided with respirators, probably even if they were unprovided. But, so long as London is undefended in this respect, it constitutes a standing temptation to any power desirous of making this kind of experiment. ”

“ Air-tight tanks with adequate arrangements for filtering the incoming air are probably more hopeful, as mustard gas will not poison motors as it does men. (The motors would, of course, have their own air-supply, as it would hardly be practicable to filter air in the quantities needed by them.) To support the tanks and to tackle specially protected machine-gunners use will probably be made of immune infantry. One attack of gas-poisoning, whether by the lungs or skin, produces no [45] immunity to a second attack—in fact, it generally increases the sensitivity of the victim. ”

“ They found that there was a very resistant class, comprising 20% of the white men tried, but no less than 80% of the negroes. This as intelligible, as the symptoms of mustard gas, blistering, and sun-burn are very similar, and negroes are pretty well immune to sun-burn. It looks therefore as if, after a slight preliminary test, it should be [46] possible to obtain coloured troops who would all be resistant to mustard gas blistering in concentrations harmful toward most white men. Enough resistant whites are available to officer them. ”

“ In general, pacifists are a very great military advantage to Britain. On the outbreak of war the large majority of them become intensely patriotic, whereas beforehand they lead our own military authorities and also those of our potential allies and enemies to underestimate our strength. This keeps us out of some wars, and leads to our showing unsuspected power in others. [5] After a few years of war, when the originally bellicose politicians like Lord Lansdowne are getting tired, ex-pacifists like Lloyd George and Pitt have just got into their stride. ”

“ It seems, then, that mustard gas would enable an army to gain ground with far less killed on either side than the methods used in the late war, and would tend to establish a war of movement leading to a fairly rapid decision, as in the campaigns of the past. It would not much upset the present balance of power, Germany’s chemical industry being counterpoised by French negro troops. Indians may be expected to be nearly as immune as negroes. ”