I have been able through certain channels, which I cannot at present mention, to secure a considerable amount of information as to the German side of this attack. When it became known in the trenches of the enemy that these gases were to be used, there is reason to believe that there was a protest from the soldiers against it. Many of the Russians are charitable enough to take the point of view that the common soldier resorts to these methods because he is forced to do so, and they say that the German private rebelled at the idea of using so hideous a method of conducting warfare. Others, while they accept the story of the soldiers’ opposition, declare they only feared the effects of the gas upon themselves. In any event there is evidence that their officers told them that the gas was a harmless one, and would simply result in putting the Russians into a state of unconsciousness from which they would recover in a few hours, and by that time the Germans would have been able to take their trenches without the loss of a man. It was at first believed that the white powder placed on the straw was the element of the poison gas, but it later appeared that this was merely to produce a screen of heavy and harmless smoke behind which the real operations could be conducted. The actual source of the gas was in the trenches themselves. Steel cylinders or tanks measuring a metre in length by perhaps 6 inches in width were let in end downwards into the floor of the trench, with perhaps half of the tanks firmly bedded in the ground. At the head of the cylinder was a valve, and from this ran a lead pipe over the top of the parapet and then bent downwards with the opening pointed to the ground. These tanks were arranged in groups of batteries the unit of which was ten or twelve, each tank being perhaps two feet from its neighbour. Between each group was a space of twenty paces. I have not been able to learn the exact length of the prepared trenches, but it was perhaps nearly a kilometre long. As soon as their line was masked by the volumes of the screening smoke, these taps were turned on simultaneously and instantly the thick greenish yellow fumes of the chloral gas poured in expanding clouds upon the ground, spreading like a mist upon the face of the earth.