And here is another example of gas tactics: Word having reached the French that the Germans were planning to attack a certain sector near Rheims, the troops holding this portion of the line were quietly withdrawn from the front trenches the night before the attack was to take place, a few autoriflemen being left to simulate a defense. Before the troops departed, however, they placed mustard-gas shells, which had been fitted by the artillery with electrically controlled fuses, in the dugouts. The French gunners had, meanwhile, ascertained to a foot the range of the trenches which were being evacuated. At daybreak came the expected German attack. As the helmeted figures came swarming across No Man’s Land in the dim light of early dawn the few remaining Frenchmen set off green rockets as a signal to the artillery and took to their heels. No sooner had the Germans occupied the evacuated trenches, therefore, than the French batteries turned loose on them a hurricane of steel, putting down a barrage which completely cut them off from their own lines. The Germans naturally sought shelter from this shell-storm in the deserted dugouts. At about the same moment a French artillery officer pressed his finger upon a button, an electric current leaped along a buried wire, the shells in the dugouts were blown asunder, liberating the poison-gas—and the Germans perished almost to a man. [Illustration: ADVANCING UNDER GAS. This photograph was not taken in real action but at the Army Gas School in France.] [Illustration: TRAINING FOR GAS WARFARE. Troops wearing gas masks charging in open order in practice at Long Island City.] [Illustration: CUTTING THEIR WAY THROUGH BARBED-WIRE ENTANGLEMENTS WHILE TRAINING WITH GAS MASKS.] As the result of the experiments at American University, Lakehurst, and Edgewood, and the experiences of our troops in the field, several new gases of incredible deadliness were invented as well as numerous new methods of using them, many of which would certainly have been utilized had the war continued. But the League of Nations being still confined to paper, and universal disarmament being still in the distant future, it is as well, I feel, not to particularize about them. It is enough to say that, thanks to the work of the Chemical Warfare Service, there are stored away in the vaults of the War Department certain plans and formulas which, in the event of another war—which God forbid!—would give us a weapon of undreamed-of potency and terror. Speaking from first-hand knowledge, I can assure any potential enemies of the United States that the chemical warfare which we are prepared to wage should the necessity ever arise again would make our recent gas activities, vast as they were, seem like a joke. IV THE “Q. M. C.”