This super-gas, as it has been termed, was known to the Chemical Warfare Service as G-34, though it was more commonly referred to as methyl, a name which was given it because it in no way suggested the true character of this newest and deadliest of poisons. It has also been dubbed “Lewisite” because it was developed from the original formula to a stage which made it practicable for military use by Professor W. Lee Lewis, chief of the Defense Department of the Research Division of the Chemical Warfare Service. Methyl, or Lewisite, is an oily, amber-colored liquid, with an odor which vaguely suggests that of the geranium. It is somewhat more volatile than mustard-gas, being comparable in that respect to benzol. Instead of being inoffensive at first contact, like mustard, it starts an acute pain which quickly becomes unendurable. A single drop spilled on the hand will penetrate to the blood, attacking first the kidneys, then the heart and lungs. It hardens the cell-tissues of the lungs and causes simultaneously strangulation and a weakening of the heart which result in speedy and violent death. If taken into the lungs by inhalation in any perceptible quantity it kills almost instantly, the victim dying in terrible agony. _It is estimated to be seventy-two times deadlier than mustard-gas._ The manufacture of methyl was carried on in an abandoned motor-car plant at Willoughby, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland, the work being in charge of Colonel F. M. Dorsey, who, before the war, was a chemical engineer in the employ of the General Electric Company. Every step in the process of manufacture was enveloped in the most profound secrecy. Every workman who entered the stockade surrounding the plant did so under a voluntary agreement not to leave the eleven-acre space until the war was won, though this arrangement was later modified upon the men promising upon their honor not to divulge the nature of the product or even the existence of the plant. All mail was censored and even the use of the word Willoughby in correspondence was forbidden, letters for the officers and men connected with the plant being addressed to a lock-box in Cleveland. There was no recreation, the work was hard and danger was always present, the men working with their gas-masks constantly at the “alert” position. Though none of the masks designed for protection against chlorpicrin, phosgene, or mustard were of the slightest avail against methyl, the safety of the workers was ensured by specially designed masks and clothing. Had we used methyl against the Germans, however, it is extremely unlikely that they would have succeeded in devising a means of protection against it—at least in time to save themselves.