THE GAS FIEND
Reading edition
At some time between 4 and 5 p.m. (22d April) the Germans started operations by releasing gases with the result that a cloud of poisonous vapor rolled swiftly before the wind from their trenches toward those of the French west of Langemarck, held by a portion of the French Colonial Division. Allowing sufficient time for the fumes to take full effect on the troops facing them, the Germans charged forward over the practically unresisting enemy in their immediate front, and, penetrating through the gap thus created, pressed on silently and swiftly to the south and west.
British Official Eyewitness. April 27, 1915.
“We shall not allow these wonderful weapons, which German intelligence invented, to grow rusty.”
The Cologne Gazette.
Germany was a signatory to the declaration at the Hague Conference of 1899, and an article in that Declaration ran as follows: “The contracting Powers agree to abstain from the use of projectiles the sole object of which is the diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious gases.”
