“among the recommendations forwarded to the Board of Ordnance and Fortifications there may be found many suggestions in favor of the asphyxiation process, mostly by the employment of gases contained in bombs to be thrown within the lines of the foe, with varying effects from peaceful slumber to instant death. One ingenious person suggested a bomb laden to its full capacity with snuff, which should be so evenly and thoroughly distributed that the enemy would be convulsed with sneezing, and in this period of paroxysm it would be possible to creep up on him and capture him in the throes of the convulsion.” That the probable use of poisonous gas has often been in the minds of military men during recent times is evidenced by the fact that at the Hague Conference in 1899 several of the more prominent nations of Europe and Asia pledged themselves not to use projectiles whose only object was to give out suffocating or poisonous gases. Many of the Powers did not sign this declaration until later. Germany signed and ratified it on Sept. 4, 1900, but the United States never signed it. Further, this declaration was not to be binding in case of a war in which a non-signatory was or became a belligerent. Admiral Mahan, a United States delegate, stated his position in regard to the use of gas in shell (at that time an untried theory) as follows: “The reproach of cruelty and perfidy addressed against these supposed shells was equally uttered previously against fire-arms and torpedoes, although both are now employed without scruple. It is illogical and not demonstrably humane to be tender about asphyxiating men with gas, when all are prepared to admit that it is allowable to blow the bottom out of an ironclad at midnight, throwing four or five hundred men into the sea to be choked by the water, with scarcely the remotest chance to escape.” At the Hague Congress of 1907, article 23 of the rules adopted for war on land states: “It is expressly forbidden (_a_), to employ poisons or poisonous weapons.” Before the War suffocating cartridges were shot from the cartridge-throwing rifle of 26 mm. These cartridges were charged with ethyl bromoacetate, a slightly suffocating and non-toxic lachrymator. They were intended for attack on the flanking works of permanent fortifications, flanking casements or caponiers, into which the enemy tried to make the cartridges penetrate through the narrow slits used for loopholes. The men who were serving the machine guns or the cannon of the flanking works would have been bothered by the vapor from the ethyl bromoacetate, and the assailant would have profited by their disturbance to get past the obstacle presented by the fortification. The employment of these devices, not entailing death, did not contravene the Hague conventions.