The objection to scientific weapons such as the gases of the late war, and such new devices as may be employed in the next, is essentially an objection to the unknown. Fighting with lances or guns, one can calculate, or thinks one can calculate, one’s chances. But with gas or rays or microbes one has an altogether different state of affairs. Poisonous gas had a great moral effect, just because it was new, and incomprehensible. As long as we permit ourselves to be afraid of the novel and unknown, there will be a very great temptation to use novel and unknown weapons against us. Now, terror of the unknown is thoroughly right and rational so long as we believe that the prince of this world is a malignant being. But it is not justifiable if we believe that the world is the expression of a power friendly to our aspirations, or if we are atheists and hold that it is neutral and indifferent to human ideals. It will by now have become clear to you that I am writing somewhat parabolically. What I have said about mustard gas might be applied, _mutatis mutandis_, to most other applications of science to human life. 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 when he says that, though he is prepared on occasion to fight, he will not use these nasty new-fangled weapons. Of course I am not suggesting that we should violate or prepare to violate the Washington Agreement on this subject. I do, however, believe that we ought to denounce it at the earliest possible opportunity. Such are the facts about chemical warfare. They will not be believed because a belief in them would do violence to the sentiments of most people. They will not be promulgated, as there is no money to be made out of them. (Chemical manufacturers make both high explosive and mustard gas, and the former more easily.) The views which I have expressed do not coexist in the mind of any party leader or newspaper proprietor, and must therefore be those of a crank. But until some stronger argument can be waged against them than that they are unusual and unpleasant, there remains the possibility that they are true. * * * * * Transcriber’s Notes: ――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_). ――Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected. ――Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved. ――Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.