Even some of the experts in the Chemical Warfare Service accepted the common, but, as it proved, erroneous, opinion after the armistice that the great quantities of war gases accumulated by this nation and others during the war would be a dangerous menace as long as they were in storage, and that they would have to be destroyed, presumably by being dumped into the sea. These poisons were supposed to be so corrosive in their action that no metal containers would hold them long. Since large quantities of the war gases on hand after the armistice were loaded into steel shell, it was assumed that these shell and their contents would be a dead loss, except, perhaps, for some slight salvage value. Events after the armistice seemed to strengthen this impression. Leakage, for instance, was undoubtedly occurring in the gas shell stored in our shell dumps in France; and it was dangerous for unmasked men to work around some of these dumps. An even more convincing demonstration of the instability of loaded gas projectiles was given accidentally at Edgewood Arsenal after the armistice. Among the war stocks there declared surplus was one consignment of 500,000 hand grenades loaded with stannic chloride, a smoke-producing chemical. These had been returned from France, and they were undoubtedly in poor condition. On the voyage from France the chemical had begun to eat holes through the metal of the grenades, and several thousand of the grenades had had to be thrown overboard. The Chemical Warfare Service sold these grenades to a chemical company. When a locomotive backed down to couple to the cars containing the grenades, the slight jar exploded fully half the missiles, and nobody could go near that sidetrack for two or three days. This incident apparently showed the impermanency of war gases. Actually it demonstrated the impermanency only of stannic chloride, which is highly corrosive to metal; and stannic chloride, in the quantities produced, was a relatively unimportant war chemical. Nevertheless, in the fear that other more highly toxic gases would also corrode and eat through their containers, the Chemical Warfare Service dumped into the ocean some twenty tons of phosgene and a large quantity of mustard-gas shell. This was probably sheer waste, as it proved, because subsequent experimentation established the fact that the most deadly of the war gases could be safely stored for years if all water moisture were driven from the chemicals themselves and all air exhausted from the containers, leaving only the pure chemicals in contact with the metal of the containers. Corrosion was found to be due to the presence of moisture within the containers.