war into the year 1919. HUMANITY OF GAS A few words right here about the humanity of gas are not out of place, notwithstanding the Army and the general public have now so completely indorsed chemical warfare that it is believed the argument of inhumanity has no weight whatever. There were three great reasons why chemical warfare was first widely advertised throughout the world as inhumane and horrible. These reasons may be summed up as follows: In the first place, the original gas used at Ypres in 1915 was chlorine, and chlorine is one of a group of gases known as suffocants—gases that cause death generally by suffocating the patient through spasms of the epiglottis and throat. That is the most agonizing effect produced by any gas. The second reason was unpreparedness. The English had no masks, no gas-proof dugouts, nor any of the other paraphernalia that was later employed to protect against poisonous gas. Consequently, the death rate in the first gas attack at Ypres was very high, probably 35 per cent. As a matter of fact, every man who was close to the front line died. The only ones who escaped were those on the edges of the cloud of gas or so far to the rear that the concentration had decreased below the deadly point. The third great reason was simply propaganda. It was good war propaganda to impress upon everybody the fact that the German was capable of using any means that he could develop in order to win a victory. He had no respect for previous agreements or ideas concerning warfare. This propaganda kept up the morale and fighting spirit of the Allies, and was thoroughly justifiable upon that score, even when it led to wild exaggeration. The chlorine used in the first attack by the German is the least poisonous of the gases now used. Those later introduced, such as phosgene, mustard gas and diphenylchloroarsine are from five to ten times as effective. The measure of humanity for any form of warfare is the percentage of deaths to the total number injured by the particular method of warfare under consideration. =American Gas Casualties.= The official list of casualties in battle as compiled by the Surgeon General’s office covering all cases reported up to September 1, 1919, is 258,338. Of these 70,752, or 27.4 per cent, were gas casualties. Also of the above casualties 46,519 resulted in death, of whom about 1,400 only were due to gas. From these figures it is readily deduced that while 24.85 per cent of all casualties from bullets and high explosives resulted in death, only 2 per cent of those wounded by gas resulted in death. That is, a man wounded on the battle field with gas had twelve times as many chances of recovery as the man who was wounded with bullets and high explosives. FUNDAMENTALS OF CHEMICAL WARFARE