OCR Text |
Show Chemical Arm Is Weapon of Future, English Scientist Predicts ay PROF. F. FRANCIS, Dean of the Faculty of Science, Bristol UllMCIOIl,!. (Written for International News Service.) LONDON Swift and annihilating death, In the form of a fog. will come upon the nation In the next war. The chemical arm is the arm of the future. We shall have a state of affairs similar to that produced by tho first introduction of firearms. People wondered won-dered then what was going to happen I next, -Vc have the present outcome of thj "';e of firearms in guns that can I sink a ship twenty miles away. This war has seen the advent of the new chemical warfare fn Its infancy, j . The Germans first used chlorine in 1915. No ono knows, what will be used in the future. Beyond a certain limit what will happen in the future is more guesswork. guess-work. If the Germans could have sent mustard gas over as a lasting fog hey would have won tho war, for, at present, pres-ent, there is no effective provision against It. The nation that first discovers dis-covers and uses such a fog must compel com-pel the other side to givo in. Pcoplo may say it cannot be done, as they would have said in the days' of muskets, if they could have been told of guns to carry twenty miles. There is no such word in science aaj "cannot," and all sorts of things will be possible in tho future. Wc might have a mustard gas clou! which would last like a London fofc. Nature can keep a fog over London. The question is, what nation can do IH tho same? IB It cannot bo done at present, or the Hj Germans would have dono It, IT Tho natural fog is only wator, with the filth of the city atmosphere dis-solved dis-solved in it. A gaa fog would bo a fog Intended to kill, or, at least, to jiut the enemy out of nction. " r jH I imagine tho next war will not bo a long, protracted struggle, but sud-den, sud-den, swift and annihilating. It sdonis certain to mo that It will be a clioml-war clioml-war Tho war office Is establishing aspc- Ifll clal department to deal with chonilcal jB appliances for use In war, but I'hopo no nation will use theso things agaf'i. It would bo loo terrible. ' ' |