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Show JTTER DESTRUCTION OF PARIS, HIDEOUS PLAN OF HUNS; FULL DETAILS OF THE SCHEIE IlEJUBLIC Shown That a Liquid Fire Was to Have Been Used to Accomplish Purposes. Secret Is Revealed Through Revelation of War Plans to the German Assembly. (By Universal Service Staff Correspondent.) LONDON, Sept. 4. A hint of one war horror, at least, which was no; resorted to in the last war, but which may well take its place among the d3 structive agencies to be employed in the next "inevitable conflict,'"' has come out with this week's revelations of war secnets in the German National assembly. This is the aerial flame thrower, well christened "the flying death." A Copenhagen message, published here by the air ministry, says the Berlin Ber-lin Post has published a. letter which Herr Erzbcrger sent to General von Ealkenhayn, then war minister, in September, Sep-tember, 1914 just a month after tly war stated wherein he recommended that Zeppelins invading England be equipped with flame throwers, or llame spraysr from which liquid fire could be droppod in a drenching rain upon crowded cities. The alleged letter from Erzberger concluded with a statement of the writ er 's conviction 'that all humanitarian i considerations and scruples relative to I the violation of international law should J to set aside in the fatherland's battle i against her ring of enemies. ! Is Declared Feasible. j Unfortunately, the published letter I does not enter into the details of how I liquid fire was to have been squirted from a black midnight sky upon a de f?nseless enemy city; but I have been informed by an official of the Bri'tsh air ministry that not only is the idea practicable, but that the Royal air force engineers actually had under consideration considera-tion an invention which would carry into execution this very idea. But beyond giving practical demonstrations demon-strations of the appliance before the heads of the department, the British fliers did nothing. They did not hold the same views as Erzberger is alleged to have held in regard to sanctity of I international law. I am privileged to make the statement, state-ment, however, that if, when the next, great war comes it is accompanied by any wholesale disregard of one-time conventions concerning the rights of 1 non-combatants such as characterised tine actions of sonic of the belligerents in the last epochal struggle, the dreadful dread-ful rain of tire from the sky may become be-come one of the incidents of destruction. This, with the reported super-poisonous gas said to be a secret in tlx' possession of the United States army and. like the aerial flame, capable of being dropped from tho skies, would make the wiping out of a race merely a mutter mut-ter of mathematical computation. , - Fast Coming to Light. Bit by bit the stories of the war hoi rors the grappling nations in the last great conflict had locked up in their technicians' cabinets, but did not put into use, are coming to light. Before the revelations concerning the fire from line skies we heard a tew I mouths ago in roundabout fashion of the German plan lor the total des'rue tion of Pari,, which was to have been employed this year, but which the armistice armi-stice happily nipped before the bloom. This was in a way even a rcllnemeii t over the Erzberger notion of a death rain. Light flying scouts were to precede Germany's maximum possible fleet' of bombing planes in a final sally against the French capital. The scouts were to be equipped with small fire bombs of some chemical which, when burning, defied the action of water. Only Defense Possible. These were to be showered upon Paris by the hundreds, creating fires everywhere. every-where. Then the heavier bombers were to follow hard after and drop tons upon tons of high explosives upon the city, which lay resealed by the light of its burning buildings. The only possible defense against such an ttack would have been barrage fire and a counterattack by 1'reiicil guarding airplanes of the fighiiiig type. Put the war demonstrated what is now counted an axiom in air warfare, which is thai neither of these methods of defense during a night attack is more than a stall in the dark. Had such a concerted attack by German Ger-man airplanes been made upon Pans, there is no question but that the world s most beautiful city would have beta wrecked beyond r"storatien. |