The methyl, as manufactured, was loaded into both shell and drums. The shell, of 155mm. calibre, contained about ten pounds of the liquid, which becomes a gas upon contact with the air; the drums, which held from 350 to 400 pounds each, were to be dropped from airplanes. It is estimated that half a hundred of these drums, judiciously distributed, would exterminate the entire population of Manhattan Island. When the Armistice was signed methyl was being produced at the rate of approximately ten tons a day and the plant at Willoughby was two months ahead of its schedule, orders having been given that 3,000 tons should be in France, ready for use, by March 1, 1919. It was well for Germany that she quit when she did. Had methyl been turned loose against the Huns, civilization would have had its revenge on the assassins of the _Lusitania_, on the fiends who ravaged France and raped Belgium. Within forty-eight hours after the signing of the Armistice the work of dismantling the plant at Willoughby had begun, and ten weeks later its demolition was complete. A special train, running at night under heavy guard, carried the hundreds of tons of methyl which had already been produced, in iron containers, to Edgewood Arsenal, where it was transferred to a steamer, taken out to sea, and lowered into three miles of salt water. But the formulæ and processes for manufacture still exist, locked away in the great vaults of the War College in Washington, so, if the nation is ever again forced to take up arms, it has at hand the most terrible weapon ever devised for the purpose of wholesale slaughter.