A deserter had come over from the German side a week before and told them that cylinders of poison gas had been laid in the front trenches, but no one believed him or paid any attention to his tale. War was then, in the Englishman's opinion, a gentleman's game, the royal sport, and poison was prohibited by the Hague rules. But the Germans were not playing the game according to the rules, so the British soldiers were strangled in their own trenches and fell easy victims to the advancing foe. Within half an hour after the gas was turned on 80 per cent. of the opposing troops were knocked out. The Canadians, with wet handkerchiefs over their faces, closed in to stop the gap, but if the Germans had been prepared for such success they could have cleared the way to the coast. But after such trials the Germans stopped the use of free chlorine and began the preparation of more poisonous gases. In some way that may not be revealed till the secret history of the war is published, the British Intelligence Department obtained a copy of the lecture notes of the instructions to the German staff giving details of the new system of gas warfare to be started in December. Among the compounds named was phosgene, a gas so lethal that one part in ten thousand of air may be fatal. The antidote for it is hexamethylene tetramine. This is not something the soldier--or anybody else--is accustomed to carry around with him, but the British having had a chance to cram up in advance on the stolen lecture notes were ready with gas helmets soaked in the reagent with the long name. The Germans rejoiced when gas bombs took the place of bayonets because this was a field in which intelligence counted for more than brute force and in which therefore they expected to be supreme. As usual they were right in their major premise but wrong in their conclusion, owing to the egoism of their implicit minor premise. It does indeed give the advantage to skill and science, but the Germans were beaten at their own game, for by the end of the war the United States was able to turn out toxic gases at a rate of 200 tons a day, while the output of Germany or England was only about 30 tons. A gas plant was started at Edgewood, Maryland, in November, 1917. By March it was filling shell and before the war put a stop to its activities in the fall it was producing 1,300,000 pounds of chlorine, 1,000,000 pounds of chlorpicrin, 1,300,000 pounds of phosgene and 700,000 pounds of mustard gas a month.