Magic at Hamburg

Once there were dread Magicians who sold to unscrupulous Knights charms guaranteed to render them invisible. Assume for an instant that such a charm could work. Then an army of knights so provided might walk boldly & unseen into the City of Hamburg, select 11 victims at random, and plunge invisible but deadly swords through their hearts. Perhaps the invisible knights would round out a day of ghoulish sport by maiming 200 more unsuspecting men, women & children. Such fiends would delight to steal upon a wedding party and strike down the bride, the bridegroom and the guests. As their sadistic fury grew they would slay horses, cattle, dogs, cats, and perhaps run mad, slashing trees, stabbing bushes, murdering grass. . . .

Last week precisely the crazed medieval orgy of Devildom described above was reproduced in modern Hamburg when rust ate through a commonplace-looking tank and something began to escape with a faint hiss. The murderous invisible thing that stole forth was phosgene, almost imperceptible war gas. Two girls were fishing from a rowboat in the harbor nearby. When the air surrounding them became charged with phosgene vapor in the minute proportion of one-half gram per cubic yard they went suddenly limp, as the poison acted on their lungs. Invisible swords in the hands of cowardly assassins would not have been so quick, so deadly.

Slowly the invisible cloud took on impalpable bulk and was wafted by a light breeze across the River Elbe toward Wilhelmsburg. Adults and children dropped without knowing why. Cattle fell as though poleaxed. Dogs, cats, chickens, ducks died gasping, and trees, shrubs, grass began to shrivel. The phosgene drifted over an amusement park. Chubby children with toy balloons crumpled down and let the colored rubber spheres go soaring upward prettily to pure untainted upper air. As the gas spread a little way, a merry wedding breakfast party found their food and bubbling champagne unpalatable, and most collapsed. By now however survivors were rushing frantically about screaming "War Gas!" fleeing perhaps away from and perhaps toward the Invisible Enemy.

Black Magic used to be undone by White. What Science has done Science can undo. A telephone carried the catastrophic news to Berlin. Back flashed the advice of War Gas Army experts: "Pump ammonia into the air. Pump water, if that's all you've got. Throw the leaking phosgene tank into the canal. Water decomposes phosgene. Give the surviving patients milk."

Brave men of the Hamburg Fire Department donned masks intended merely for protection against smoke and rolled the leaking phosgene tank into the nearby canal. Heroes, they were rushed to hospitals, given milk and other antidotes. The entire milk supply of Hamburg was commandeered for the hospitals. Some babies not gassed went hungry until more milk arrived.

Meanwhile Science sent huge trimotored Lufthansa planes roaring from Berlin to Hamburg laden with effective gas masks and phosgene fighting equipment. They were not too late to save many lives; but the Death toll stood already at 11, with over 200 patients in hospitals. In that black hour, at Hamburg, shuddering, hysterical thousands thought of THE NEXT WAR.

Official investigators sent by Minister of Commerce Dr. Julius Curtius reported in substance: "An accident." One Herr Hugo Stolzenberg owned the gas and was only a trifle vague as to where he got it. He has more, several additional cylinders. Correspondents were of the opinion that some of the cylinders contained leftover German War gas stock, and thought that others might have come from the phosgene plant set up by German technicians in Russia at the request of the Soviet Government.

At 45 East 17th street, Manhattan, President Bernard R. Armour of the Heyden Chemical Corp. said that over a year ago he bought some phosgene from Herr Stolzenberg. "We have only about 500 pounds of the gas on hand at a time," said Mr. Armour, explaining that from phosgene are manufactured certain pharmaceutical products, such as potassium guaiacol carbonate. "We keep our gas in 50-pound containers in Fords, some distance from Perth Amboy, N. J. The building is in the centre of an open field and carefully guarded. There is very little danger."

At Berlin the German War Ministry would make absolutely no statement, and a few Paris journals clamored for a League of Nations investigation to determine whether Germany is making more phosgene for commercial purposes than is permitted by the Allies. At Hamburg no action was taken, last week, against Herr Stolzenberg, whom officials seemed to think had a proper title to his gas wherever he got it. It would have been, they said, perfectly legal for him to buy leftover Army phosgene. With apparent sincerity Big Gas Man Stolzenberg declared that he would cooperate with the experts in destroying or neutralizing every atom of phosgene which he possessed by any means which they would agree to suggest. His loss, he said, would be about $25,000. The experts then began a learned squabble, some advising that the phosgene be dumped into the North Sea, others declaring that such a procedure would poison untold millions of fish, and still others recommending that the safest thing to do would be decant the gas into new, strong tanks and sell it as quickly as possible to widely spread consumers. Eventually the consensus of opinion was that the phosgene should be disintegrated by the admixture of other chemicals into a harmless residual product.