Page:"The next war"; an appeal to common sense (IA thenextwarappeal01irwi).pdf/86

 To make civilians keep themselves greased, to make them assume their masks promptly and intelligently in the event of a general killing raid over London or Paris, we should have to render universal military training really universal, and begin it not in the schools but in the cradle. The same objection—with expense in addition—would apply to the provision of “anti-gas”’ suits for all civilians in the great cities.

The gas-proof tank, a military improvement now virtually accomplished, points the way to the perfect defence. Colonel Fuller imagines “centres of defence”—fortresses, or something like them, rendered gas-tight, wherein you may keep your reserve forces, to which your tanks will return for repairs and replenishment of supplies. We can reconstruct our great cities so as to furnish for our civilians “centres of defence.” That was done imperfectly in the late war, when in constantly-raided towns such as Venice the authorities banked the deep cellars with sandbags, thus turning them into dug-outs like these used by the troops. However, cellars will never form a defence against sinking, lethal, cell-killing gas like Lewisite and its probable successors. The shelters must be large enough to accommodate the people of a whole city; they must be deep enough in the ground to resist the enormous explosive power of the great, new bombs; they must be gas-proofed, either by rendering them air-tight and furnishing oxygen to keep the inmates alive, or by providing ventilators