Will Chemistry Fight?

A knot of the idle curious pressed around the ropes. Inside the shut-off area --a stretch of bomb-racked street back of Victoria Station, London--grotesque figures moved about: men dressed like sailors out in some supernatural storm, in great shiny capes, voluminous shiny trousers, boots, gloves, masks, helmets.

A loudspeaker on a truck said in sternest tones: "When I shout the word, everyone, including the press, must put on his mask."

Then the loudspeaker roared the word: "GAS!"

The weirdly dressed people inside the ropes began running about like characters in a dream. They carried three girls and two tailors' dummies out of a house. They carried some canned food out of another house and ran down the street with it. They exercised themselves with stretchers. A dog strayed inside the ropes and they chased it.

Thus, as stiffly and artificially as a group of actors reading a bad play for the first time, did London's A. R. P. squads hold their first rehearsal of defense against gas. For a semblance of reality, a harmless gas with a stench like musty hay had been slopped in liquid form inside the roped off arena.

If gas is used at all in the invasion of Britain, it will very probably be used not against military personnel, but against civilians, against these same idle, curious bystanders who could be turned into hysterical, panicked refugees. The most probable military use of gas would be at traffic and rail intersections behind the lines, to confuse communications. Against troops, in a war of speedy motion, some of the most efficient gases would hamper the attacker as much as the defender. But against civilians it might have great effect. The British expect that if gas is used, it will be sprayed by airplanes or dropped in bombs on populous centres.

The fear of gas which put a mask under the arm of nearly every Londoner at the war's beginning had abated by last week to an almost dangerous point. The Government, seriously thinking that the enemy might use gas in his assault on the British Isles, initiated a series of test gas attacks, warned citizens to keep their masks about them, reminded them that the yellow signboards all over the countryside would turn red if blister gas touched them, issued instructions for making rooms relatively gasproof with sticky tape and rubber stripping.

Few British experts believed in the possibility of mass gas attacks wiping out whole cities. Few believed that Germany has discovered any new, unprecedentedly lethal gas. The familiar poison gases, against which Britons were warned, are the following:

Lachrymators cause weeping and temporary blindness, but no permanent injury. Tear gases are useful only for confusion.

Sternutators cause sneezing and vomiting, and were occasionally used in the last war because they penetrated the then crude gas masks, produced their irritations, caused men to remove masks and fall victim to more lethal gases.

Systemic toxics, a small group of gases of which the principal member is hydrocyanic acid, kill by paralyzing the central nervous system. These "nerve gases" have produced most of the Buck Rogers tales of World War II, but are completely impractical for warfare because they diffuse into atmosphere almost instantaneously.

Lung injurants caused most of the gas fatalities in World War I. They cause blood fluid to flood the lung's air sacs, killing the victim very much as drowning does. The principal types used in the last war were chlorine and phosgene; types have also been perfected which include a little arsenic just in case the victim survives lung injury.

Vesicants are the most efficient. They burn flesh. They stick to ground surfaces for weeks under ideal conditions, penetrate clothing, give almost no warning of their presence. They are seldom fatal, but in warfare an invalid needs more care than a corpse. Mustard gas is the most famous of the vesicants. Whereas in World War I sternutators caused one casualty for every 650 pounds of gas used, and lung injurants one per 230 pounds, blister gas was much more efficient: one per 60 pounds. There are no certain defenses against it except reprisal. But it is not the easiest gas to make.

Although the British took their instructions with a laugh, the Germans reacted with a snarl. These instructions proved, they said, that the British were planning to use gas. To the British, this reaction was bad news. They remembered what Adolf Hitler had said in pre-apology for all-out bombings: "From now on, bomb will be answered with bomb. . . . Whoever disregards the rules of humane warfare cannot expect from us that we will not take the same step."

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