Victor Lefebure

“ When we find a Member of Parliament seriously discussing disarmament, endeavouring to deal with the matter in detail, and yet classing gas as one of those methods of warfare in connection with which production can he easily prevented, [1] we can only stand in amazement before our traditional fault, deliberate sidetracking of expert guidance. When we realise that it was not until after the Armistice that the Hartley Commission opened our eyes to the war importance of the German dye industry, we see how blind a nation may be in matters vital to its defence. ”

“ Organic chemical factories have proved to be not only arsenals in disguise but endowed with the flexibility of their parent, the science itself. The factories and plants ignore the war significance of the problems put to them. They can develop the production of practically any chemical which research can produce. The will of man can thus silently and swiftly convert the dye factory into an arsenal.
These inherent possibilities of organic chemistry, flexibility in research and production, make chemical warfare the most important war problem in the future reconstruction of the world. ”

“ Peculiar Peace-Time Danger.—There can be no doubt therefore that the mere contact of two armies during war acts as a check against the decisive use of chemical warfare, except in the very early stages. During peace this contact will be practically non-existent, and it would be possible for any country so to diverge in its lines of research and discovery that, given rapid means of production, it could repeat the German surprise of 1915, this time with decisive results. Should such a nation possess a monopoly in the means of rapid production, the world is practically at her mercy. ”

“ This organisation emerges from the war with renewed and greater strength. Our splendid but improvised factories drained the vital forces of the nation, and now lie idle, while German war chemical production fed new life blood and grafted new tissue to the great pre-war factories of the I.G., which, if she will, she can use against us in the future. I do not claim that this German combine has at present any direct economic or military policy against world peace. In any case, the facts must speak for themselves. ”

“ The weak point in such a scheme is the organic chemical industry. There must be a redistribution of capacity, for while Germany retains a vast world monopoly of potential organic chemical munitions, which fed the armaments of the past with explosives and poison gas, and to which the weapons of the future are looking for inspiration and sustenance, disarmament will be a hollow farce.
The League of Nations may succeed in rooting out the means of production of certain munitions. But organic chemical factories must survive for the sake of their material contribution to the welfare of humanity. ”

“ All are aware of the enormous national enterprises built to fulfil our explosives programme. With mushroom-like growth chemical establishments of a magnitude hitherto unknown in England arose to meet our crying needs. What was the German equivalent, and where were the huge reservoirs of gas and war chemical which filled those countless shells? Krupp, of Essen, loomed large in the mind of every Allied citizen and soldier. There lay the sinews of war in the making. ”

“ But with the tension released, and the Allies victorious, the check to the German menace appears crushing and complete. Few realise that one formidable challenge has not been answered. Silently menacing, the chemical threat remains unrecognised. How, asks the reader, can this be? Are we not aware of the poison gas campaign? Indeed, we have not yet grasped the simple technical facts of the case, and these are merely the outward signs of a deep-rooted menace whose nature, activities, and potentialities are doubly important because so utterly unsuspected by those whom they most threaten. ”

“ We must continue our studies of what is known as chemical warfare. No nation has renounced the use of poison gases as the result of the Peace Conference. There are nations whose word we could not respect if they did renounce it. It is essential to study the offensive side of chemical warfare if we are to be prepared for defence. The great importance of adequate defensive appliances arises from the fact that preparations for the offensive use of gas can be made in peace-time with great secrecy, and may have far-reaching and even fatal results in the early stages of a war. ”

“ Picture for a moment such a battle as the great German attack of March, 1918—millions of men urged forward from fixed positions under highly centralised control—they advance, say, two or three miles beyond this control and are largely dependent on local initiative for the attack. They then enter clouds of shell chemical and in less than fifteen minutes a fair percentage becomes incapable of advancing in a fixed direction, of obeying local orders, or of anything more than a sort of drunken movement. ”

“ There is a tendency to ignore this aspect of disarmament. We appear to be thinking in terms of a world still organised for war on 1914 lines. The disbanding of the German army and semi-military organisations, and the reduction of her artillery and small arms seem to occupy all our attention. Such, it might be urged, is the immediate need; we can leave the future to find answers to the other problems. This answer is dangerous, for it ignores the disarmament aspect of what is perhaps the most important development in the modern offensive campaign. We refer to poison gas or chemical warfare. ”

“ But the use of this wonderful store of energy for peace and war can only result from years of costly and voluminous research, and we have no idea of the difficulties involved in production, without which any invention, however telling and revolutionary, has no incidence on war. But in organic chemistry a single worker, following up some rare family of compounds, may stumble upon a substance pot far removed chemically from related compounds yet infinitely more potent for war. ”

“ What country would regard patent law as a barrier to the use of a valuable war invention? Secondly, the cession of an invention to the League depends entirely on the goodwill of the nation concerned. No country can be sufficiently inspected to root out its new inventions. Suppose a gas ten times more useful, from a military point of view, than mustard gas were discovered in the laboratories of the I.G. An inspector, or "Secret Service" agent, at the next bench in the laboratory might never know that the research was not aimed at the discovery of a new dye. ”

“ No one examining the American daily and scientific press, or reading the records of the various Government Committees on the proposed bills of chemical, or chemical warfare, interest can doubt that the Americans are probably as a whole much more alive to the importance of this matter than any other ally. ”

“ Each nation and any League of Nations must seriously face the question of the establishment of elaborate and complex chemical warfare organisations. It seems to me that the logical course of thought and action is as follows. If guarantees are forthcoming, internationally, removing this grave German chemical warfare threat through her manufacturing monopoly, then the need for a definite chemical striking force and organisation will be greatly reduced. National safety is itself a corollary of world disarmament. ”

“ By permitting the individual soldier to retain the efficient use of his weapons in gas, the mask, or other form of individual protection, may render a costly counter-attack unnecessary. In this way protective methods in chemical warfare may be the determining factor in some strategic campaign or tactical activity. The distinction between tactics and strategy in chemical warfare cannot be made by grouping substances, or their methods of application to war, any more than one can say that certain infantry or artillery formations or weapons have a purely strategic or tactical function. ”

“ A good deal of abuse has been showered on chemical warfare methods by those who understand very little about them. It has been claimed by such that gas is particularly atrocious. Feeling on the matter has been so strong in certain quarters that the fact that all war is particularly vile and atrocious seems to have been completely lost sight of. Let us take up this matter in a rational way. In the first place, what do we mean by the atrocity or inhumanity of a weapon? ”

“ Therefore, urgent guarantees for national safety are absolutely essential until the web of peace is strongly organised, which cannot be until the immediate menace of the monopoly in production is removed. But even then, until the general peace is fairly implanted, we must be ready for any surprise from an unscrupulous enemy. Research and training in chemical protection must be continued, and this can only be ensured by keeping abreast with offensive chemical warfare. ”

“ But such a balanced view is most important for the future. It must be remembered that the official protests in 1915 arose on the grounds, to use Lord Kitchener's words, that "they employed these poisonous methods to prevail when their attack, according to the rules of war, might have otherwise failed." Had the rules of war permitted their use, we should, no doubt, have been protected. But these protests, submerged in popular sentiment, became an outcry against the atrocity of the new weapon. ”

“ The front line trench is nothing but a series of traverses, thus to avoid the enfilade effect of shell and machine-gun fire. A straight trench is a death-trap. But to carry hundreds of pole-slung cylinders, already weighing as lead, round traverses on a dark night, is a feat requiring superhuman endurance. ”

“ In the chemical more than in any other form of warfare, production has a tactical and strategic importance and functions as an organic part of the offensive scheme. A tendency in modern war is to displace the incidence of initiative towards the rear. Staffs cannot leave the discoveries of the technical workshop or scientific laboratory out of their calculations, for their sudden introduction into a campaign may have more influence on its result than the massing of a million men with their arms and equipment for a surprise assault. ”

“ The obstacle to peace must be removed by decentralising the organic chemical factories. We cannot leave this monopoly in the hands of any country. It now lies a weapon ready to the hands of those who created and wielded it with such success. Redistributed, this dangerous productive grouping will create a source of stability and strength to a League of Nations, and will invite a national sense of security, so essential to peace and disarmament under the present regime. This has only one meaning, the establishment of dye industries in Allied countries. ”

“ We have seen how the Germans formed defensive flanks during their March, 1918, offensive, by spraying certain areas between their fronts of attack with mustard gas. It is true that, in the quantities in which it has, so far, been used, mustard gas has not converted open areas into absolute obstacles against the movement of a determined individual, platoon, or even larger unit. But even in the quantities which have already appeared on the battle-field, it has rendered whole zones practically unusable for huge masses of men, owing to the certainty of a very high percentage of casualties. ”

“ Unsolved Problems of Mustard Gas.—The use of a chemical which attacks some unexpected human function introduces many disturbing and disorganising factors. Thus the introduction of mustard gas has left us with a number of unsolved problems. By employing this substance Germany departed from her usual caution and violated one of the first principles of chemical warfare. It is unsound for any nation to introduce a new weapon, unless that nation is, itself, furnished with the means of protection against its eventual employment by the enemy. ”

“ Chemical warfare includes gas, smoke, and incendiary materials, and they can't well be subdivided. As before stated, all the early gas attacks were in the form of clouds. The value of that cloud, not only for carrying gas but for screening purposes, began to be realised in the fall of 1917. Clouds of smoke may or may not be poisonous, and they will or will not be poisonous, at the will of the one producing the smoke. For that reason every cloud of smoke in the future must be looked upon as possibly containing some deadly form of gas. ”

“ We have seen how Germany created special formations for cloud attacks, but for a time practically abandoned them, throwing most of her chemical warfare production into shell. In other words, she substituted a normal weapon, the artillery. We, on the other hand, largely impelled by the enforced simplicity of our production, tended more towards the development of special formations and special weapons for cloud production, but with such success that the German Pioneer formations, after being practically dropped, found a use in developing and using our new weapon, the Livens Projector. ”

“ There were elements in this first gas attack which were absent even from the situation created by our first use of tanks. Unfamiliarity amongst the troops, or the staff, for that matter, created an atmosphere of unparalleled confusion. Men attempted to protect themselves by burying their mouths and nostrils in the loose earth. Those chemists, on the spot, not immediately struck down, made frantic efforts to bring up supplies of any suitable and available chemical or material which might assist resistance and movement in the affected zone. ”

“ I refer to the Haber process for the production of synthetic ammonia. It would be short-sighted policy to accept the set of conditions against which we struggled, and to explain them in terms of the I.G., without looking more closely into the pre-war activities of this organisation. Such an examination may reveal the basic forces which determined our inferior position in chemical warfare at the outbreak of war. It is true that we can explain away our inferiority by referring to the German breach of faith, which automatically created conditions for which we were unprepared. ”

“ In my opinion, the further intensive development of gas warfare, such as would have accompanied, say, the doubling or quadrupling of the German factory output, would have forced us into realising the limit of this collective protection. It would have compelled us to immobilise, in these shelters, more men than was consistent with the safety of the zone in question. Undoubtedly, the future of collective protection lies in some form which will leave the soldier his combatant powers, in other words some mobile form. ”

“ I feel sure that the army appreciates the value of chemical warfare, and that it appreciates also the value of the chemists to chemical warfare.
"So long as there is any danger of other nations continuing these methods of warfare, research and experiment in chemical warfare must be pursued. Research must not only be directed towards the gases and apparatus, likely to be employed in the future, but also towards protection against all possible gases. Training in the use of gas will be confined to appropriate branches, but training in defensive measures will include the whole army. ”

“ Conclusion.—We have shown how, during the war, chemical warfare proved its surprise value and how manufacture figured repeatedly as a critical factor. We have also shown how the importance of production is magnified from the point of view of the future. The only logical conclusion is that the country which does not possess a strong dye industry, or enormously comprehensive and expensive chemical arsenals, cannot hope to escape serious military results, possibly defeat, from enemy chemical surprises. ”

“ The mere fact that a League of Nations is called into being to attain world peace implies recognition of the fact that a definite mechanism and definite measures are required for the purpose; this is self-evident. There are those who, having established their League of Nations, feel that they can attain chemical peace by merely prohibiting chemical war, in other words, they expect their mechanism to achieve its object without functioning, to attain peace by its mere existence. ”

“ There is an increase of production outside Germany of nearly 60,000 tons per annum. Almost all of this, representing development under definitely expressed national policy, must be maintained unless we wish to revert to the exceedingly dangerous situation of a German dye and poison gas monopoly. Much of this 60,000 tons per annum German excess could be covered by plants used or built specially for poison gas or explosives.
There is every reason, for world peace, to eliminate such excess plants. There is no important reason, for commerce, to maintain them. ”