The British Tommy is a difficult man to terrify, and the moral effect on the men, though quite unprotected, was remarkably small considering the terrors of the game. For two or three days all we heard about were the things we should do in the event of being similarly attacked. It appeared that great chemists from England had immediately taken up the question of providing efficient respirators, and until they came out were advising people as to emergency measures. Some of these methods seemed to us very funny. We were told, for example, that a respirator could “easily” be made by knocking the bottom off a bottle, filling the bottle with earth, and then learning to breathe with the neck of the bottle stuck in the mouth. The breath was to be taken in through the bottle and let out through the nose; but as bottles were scarce and few of them survived the attempt to get the bottom broken off there was not much doing. However, we learned that handkerchiefs filled with earth and kept moist would keep some of the gas out, and by the time the first novelty had worn off we were receiving private respirators from England. These had all been made in response to an appeal by Lord Kitchener to the women of England to make respirators for the troops out of cotton wool wrapped up in muslin or veiling. The result of this was that the War Office was absolutely swamped with millions of these respirators within a few days, and most fellows in the trenches had one or two sent out by post straightaway. Besides these, arrangements were made by the various divisions for respirators to be made in towns behind the lines; and the government factories in England got to work to turn out a simple type of respirator which had been devised by the English chemists as the quickest to make and the simplest to use. The result was that within about one month we had four or five different kinds of respirators issued to us. Most of these were simple pads of either cotton wool or cotton waste. The earlier ones were soaked in washing-soda solution, and the later ones were moistened with a special solution consisting of ordinary photographic hypo and washing soda mixed with a little glycerin. One type that we had for a week or two in the trenches consisted of the usual pad of cotton waste together with a small wad of the same material which was kept separate. The respirators were stored in boxes let into the paradoses, or rear walls of the trenches. On the alarm being given each man in the trench made a dive for a respirator, stuffed the wad into his mouth as a first protection, and then bound the pad round his mouth and nose, the wad being afterward taken out of his mouth and stuffed round his nose so as to make a tight fit.