Page:"The next war"; an appeal to common sense (IA thenextwarappeal01irwi).pdf/45

 by the code that a French Encyclopedia of War issued in the sixties of the last century defined it as “a usage of barbarous and semi-civilized warfare, for centuries discontinued by civilized nations.” The “code” was going fast. A structure of merciful if superficial ethics which had been three centuries building was toppled over in two weeks.

Eight months later, humanity arrived at a date as significant in our annals, I think, as October 12, 1492 or July 4, 1776. It is April 22, 1915, during the Second Battle of Ypres. That day, the Germans rolled across the Western trench-line a cloud of iridescent chlorine gas which sent French, Arab, English and Canadian soldiers by the thousands back to the hospitals, coughing and choking themselves to death from rotted, inflamed lungs. Had the German General Staff possessed imagination enough to use gas wholesale instead of retail on that day, they might have won their war then and there.

The significance of the second Battle of Ypres needs explanation.

Through all the centuries of mechanical and scientific improvement, military armament—the means of killing men—had lagged behind. The primitive man killed in war by hitting his opponent with a hard substance—a club or stone. Later, he sharpened the stone so that it would more readily reach a vital spot, and had a knife or a sword. He mounted the knife on a stick to give himself greater reach, and had a spear. He discovered the projecting power of the