The Daily Worker Newspaper, September 3, 1927, Page 9

Sart SER RE RRR 6 eee 3 Ea De ee PEERY of N 1914 the workers of Europe had no quarrel wit each other, and did not want war. To most of them it came as a surprise, and many were caught working, or on holiday, in countries which suddenly becarve enemy countries. The German capitalisis wanted a place in the sun, by which they meant the natural>.wealth of the tropics and cheap colored labor to exploit. France wanted Alsacefand Lor- raine, Russia wanted Constantinople and Britain wanted more colonies, and above all, oil-fields; so the stage was set for a first-class war. A race of armaments has taken place until Europe had become a powder magezine; alliances and secrt treaties en- sured that when war started, it would blaze up into a world war. » Britain went, to the rescue of poor little "Belgium and sent an a®fhy tramping over poor little Persia and seized the north Persian oil-fields. The North Persian Oils, Ltd., with a capital of 3,000,000 pounds was floated to exploit them. Another British army seized the oil-fields of Palestine and the Sinai Oil Co. appeared to develop them. When the Turkish army collapsed, British. troops were rushed to the Caucasus and seized the Baku oil-fields, but were unable to hold them. Z Now’ when the armistice arrived all the slices of other people’s countries,.which the Allies had prom- iséd one another in the secret treaties, had not been conquered; so the great war was followed by sev- eral little wars; and in one of tagse British troops slaughtered over three thousand natives, and cap- tured the Mosul oil-fields. The Anglo-Persian Oil Company’s puppet, Feisul, was made king of Iraq, as the new oil state was called; and the oil is to he exploited by the Turkish Petroleum Co. Unde- veloped oil-fields are known to exist in the province of Archangel, and a British Expedtionary Force was sent, even to this frigid zone, but a Red Army got in- the way and no Archangel Petroleum Co. ap- peared. Probably none of the capitalists even suspected ~ what they were really doing when they loosed t dogs of war. The military machine got out of con- trol, new illegal methods of warfare were introduced, international treaties proved to be worthless, and so far all attempts to abolish the new methods of warfare have proved useless. FRENCH TURPINIT. It may not be generally known that the French were first to use poison gas. { In-October, 1914, the French chemist, Turpin, had poisonous chemicals put in hand grenades, and these were used by the French under the name of Turpinit. The Workers Pay the Cost of the Military Merry-Go-Round >OISON By “X-RAY” . (This article was originally written for “The Comtuunist,” official organ of the British Com munist Party, and, therefore, deals predomin- antly with Great Britain. Buc every fact con: cerning British preparation for use of poison gas - in the next war is paralleled by similar American preparation only that American chemical indus- try is in advance of Great Britain’s s@ that the charges made hy “X-Ray” are true in an even greater desree of Gur government.—KHditor). « We wert told in the British and French press, that when the French advanced into the Gérman trenches after using. Turpinit, they found 100,000 German soldiers dead; killed. in the exact positions they happened to occupy when petrified by Tugpinit. De- spite these fantastic tales, Turpinit proved to be a failure and the French soen abandoned its use. In April, 1915, the Germans made the first suc- cessful gas attack of the war. An eye-witness gives the following description: “The Wrench have broken, we exclaimed. We hardly believed our words. .The story they told we could not believe, we put it down to their terror- stricken imaginings -— a greenish grey cloud had swept down upon them,’ turning yellow as it trav- elled over the country, blasting everything it touch- ed, shrivelling up the vegetation. No human cour- age could face such a peril. Then there staggered into our midst French soldiers, blinded, coughing, chests heaving, and faces an ugly purple color, lips speechless with agony, and behind them in the gas choked trenches we learned that they left hundreds of dead and dying comrades. The impossible was Anly too, true. It was the: Most fiendish, wickest “thing I have ever seen.” A new weapon had been forged, it may have been fiendish and wicked, but it was a military success, the French line had broken; thus despite thé~Hague Convention which prohibited the use of poison gas this new weapon was destined tq revolutionize war- fare, and to profoundly influence the future develop-.. ment of the chemical industry. This successful gas attack was a tremendous historical event, which has already influenced the course of history. During the wax, the science and art. of poisoning people made very’ rapid progress, the armies has- tily formed chemists’ corps and chemical factories f =~ Pt sion: Gh eorte were set to work to produce huge quantities of poisons. Although they were already working over- time on explosives the professors of chemistry-were started on intensive poison gas research, and a new type of chemist appeared, in the professional -poison- er. At the same time a race took place between the Allies and the Cent Powers, in the production of protective appliances, and of new poison gases to penetrate them. ; The first gas used successfully was chlorine. This s followed by phosgene, des which penetrated protect against chlorine. Chloropicrin, diphosgene and other lethal gases followed. Lachrymators were used to attack the eyes, and penetrated the gas masks used against phosgene. Airtight goggles and face masks with box respirators were used as protectors against lachrymators, so sternutators were intro- duced which penetrated the gas masks then used, made the victims sneeze and vomit in their gas masks, so that they tore them off and inhaled the lethal gases uSed with the sternutators. New methods of using poisons were also in- vented. At first the gas cloudy Were liberated from cylinders of liquid gas, which were articles of com- merce before the war. Then poisons were filled into shells and shot from guns. By an artillery gas bom- bardment a high concentration of gas could be kept up for a long time. By this,method the number of available poisons was greatly increased for it en- abled both liquids and solids to be used; as when the shell bursts the poison is blown up into a cloud of fine particles, and noisons the air. The British introduced Liven’s bombs. These consist of metal containers holding about 30 lbs. of poison. They were shot from mortars in batches of from 50 to 53000. Candles which give off a poisonous smoke were also used on a large scale towards the end of the war. The flame throwers were not suc- cessful, but grenades, bombs, and shells filled with phosphorus were very effective, as they not onty gave off choking fumes, but splashed the victims with blazing molten phosphorus. As the war progressed the use of poisons attained huge dimensions, and by the time of the armistice the German army had used over 44,000 tons of vari- ous poisons, while the Allies had used an even larger quantity. The French alone made over 18,000,000 poison gas shells. Qn one occasion the British shot 5,110 Livén’s bombs, containing 148 tons of poison gas into the enemy trenches; these were fited simul- taneously by electricity. On‘one day (Aug. 28. 1918) (Continued On. Page Bight). better used to ribed as “a the aespirators very By WM. GROPPER,