survivors of lung-irritant gases would get consumption, while those burned by mustard gas would develop cancer. This has not happened, but it is the sort of rumour that easily starts. For, after all, our greatest weapon in chemical warfare is not gas, but education, and education of all classes. By education I mean a process which puts people in general in touch with the thought of the abler minds of their own and past times, whether in literature or art, in science, mathematics, or music. 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, 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. In April, 1915, a relatively educated member of the Government got hold of a physiologist, whose name I suppress as he is a modest man. He found a rather curious state of affairs. On the _Emden_, a German cruiser captured in the Indian Ocean, a German sailor had been found in possession of a pad of lint with tapes to tie in front of his mouth. It did not even cover his nose, and, though it might or might not have been of some value against smoke, it was of none at all against gas. There was, however, a very prevalent belief at that time, and may be still, for all that I know, that German men of science were vastly superior to British. It is perfectly true that there are more of them, but I think that their average attainments in the last forty years have been, if anything, slightly below those of our own. So hypnotized, however, were some of the authorities in this country by this theory that it was being proposed to issue these articles to our troops. After pointing out their uselessness, the physiologist in question was rushed over to France in a destroyer, along with a chemist. He identified the gas used by the Germans as chlorine. On his return, he got a cylinder of that gas, let some into an air-tight chamber, and devised a rough respirator which would keep most of it out, trying various possible methods on himself. On his return to the War Office, rather short of breath from the chlorine he had breathed, he found to his horror that the appeal to the women of England for home-made respirators had been issued. Their design was apparently based on the captured German one, which had very probably been made on the _Emden_. As they were quite useless, he secured a promise that they would not be sent out to France. Things were not made easier by the opinion held in high military quarters that, offence being more important than defence, the great thing was to reply to the Germans by gassing them. As, however, this could not be done in less than five months, while respirators