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Show I ONCLESMliAS GAS Ml IB Miff ' HUN NEW YORK, Dec. 13. Details of America's "enormous preparations" to overwhelm the German armies with poison gas wero made public today by the Now -York section of the American Chemical society. Military authorities and engineering chemists, It was stated, stat-ed, had expressed the belief that Germany's Ger-many's knowledge of these preparations prepara-tions had boon an important factor in causing her to seek an armistice. Asserting that in May, 1917, the production of gas masks was started by a group of five volunteers, Colonel Bradley Dewey, commanding officor of the gas, defense, declared that up to the time tho truce was sicned there had been produced 5,000,000 masks, 3,000,000 extra canisters, 500,000 horse masks and large quantities of mustard gas suits, gloves, ointments and anti i dotes. The production of gas masks when hostilities ceased, he added, had reached 40,000 a day. The 191S model, he said, showed a revolution in design overcoming all discomforts of earlier patterns and adding tenioid euiciency. Colonel William H. "valker, commanding com-manding the Edgewood 'arsenal, said that on November 11 "we had all tho facilities for producing mustard gas at the rate of 100 tons a day, to say nothing of our resources for deluging our enemies with chlorine, phosgene chlorphrlcin and new vapor previously unknown to them." He added that 1 "there was never a.day when the pro- 1 ductlon of materials did not exceed the 1 ability to utilize it." and paid tribute to chemists who had braved the dan- ' gors of ttie '.poison gas plants, far from the glamor of the roal battlefields, battle-fields, and who In somo cases had made the supreme sacrifice. |