A Strange and Formidable Weapon: British Responses to World War I Poison Gas

Notes

Notes Acknowledgments 1. United Kingdom, Parliamentary Debates, Commons, vol. 105 (April 25, 1918), col. 1152. Introduction 1. Elmer Wilgrid Cotton diary, May 24, 1915, Imperial War Museum Document Collection, Imperial War Museum (iwm). 2. Cotton diary, undated and unpaginated entry. 3. Raemaekers, The First Twelve Months, 1:vii–xiii, 142–43. This image probably circulated earlier as an individual cartoon, as did many of the other pictures in the volume. 4. Sir Harold Hartley, “Lecture on Chemical Warfare to Staff College,” February 27, 1925, Hartley Collection ( ) 71(15), 14, Churchill Archives Centre, Churchill College, Cambridge University ( ). 5. Frank Reynolds, The Old Formula, Punch, July 14, 1915, 47. 6. Maj. E. S. B. Hamilton diary, September 8, 1916, iwm. 7. Brigadier A. E. Hodgkin diary, May 17, 1917, iwm. 8. Winston Churchill, Minute 8, May 22, 1919, War Office ( ) 32/5185, National Archives (formerly, Public Records Office, ). 9. A reviewer of the book written by the head of Britain’s offensive gas unit during World War I, Charles Foulkes, explained that “British [chemical warfare] technique advanced until it was far ahead of the German, not only in defence . . . but in offence.” Review of “Gas!” by Charles Foulkes, London Times, October 30, 1934, 8 . 10. There have been, of course, soldiers and physicians who wrote institutional histories of the army’s experiences. For example, Edmonds, Military Operations; MacPherson, Herringham, Elliott, and Balgour, Medical Services: Diseases of the War. 11. The classic is Haber, The Poisonous Cloud, written by the son of the German scientist who founded chemical warfare. 12. Union of Democratic Control, Poison Gas, 51; Murphy, Hay, and Rose, No Fire, 1. These concepts also are considered by scholars, including Omar Bartov and George Kassimeris, on a wider scale, looking back at the large and small wars of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The conflict between civilization and barbarity traditionally has been seen as a fight to keep the latter from encroaching on the former. However, there are some with a pessimistic (or perhaps re- | Notes to pages – alistic) view who wonder, in contrast to the view embraced by many, especially Europeans immediately before World War I, if it is possible to have war that is civilized and without barbarity, or if barbarity in war is here to stay and, in fact, has increased because of technology, the intersection of international and civil wars, or other reasons. Bartov, The Eastern Front; Kassimeris, “The Barbarisation of Warfare”; Bourke, “Barbarisation vs. Civilisation in Time of War,” 20, 21; Winter, “Epilogue,” 254–55. Clearly, the British before, during, and after World War I thought that barbarity was not a necessary component of warfare, although it was seen by some as a feature of that conflict that deepened the war, according to AudoinRouzeau and Becker (14–18: Understanding the Great War, 102–3). They did worry, though, that the barbarities that appeared in the conflict would triumph over civilization. With respect to chemical warfare, the outrage at the German introduction of poison gas (discussed in chapter 1), popular press images such as What War has Become that lament the threat of barbarity to civilization (chapter 5), and concerns expressed by Lord Halsbury about post–World War I gas use (chapter 6) all demonstrate this. Still, some Britons as well as governments opted to reestablish a taboo against gas with the help of international interwar treaties and popular odium toward chemical warfare. These groups would argue that the trend toward barbarization in warfare can be resisted, at least with regard to certain weapons and behaviors. 13. Some books broaden their approach, but usually in the last chapter. See Brown, Chemical Warfare; Lepick, La Grande Guerre Chimique. 14. General overviews of gas are valuable, too, but cannot, by their very nature, peer deeply into the World War I experience. See, for example, Coleman, A History of Chemical Warfare; J. B. Tucker, War of Nerves. 15. Marwick, The Deluge. 16. Förster, introduction, 2. The concept of a “total” aspect to the World War can be extended. Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker discuss the idea of a “total battle” to distinguish World War I’s extensive and inconclusive battles from the relatively short and decisive ones in previous wars (14–18: Understanding the Great War, 28). Some historians of more recent conflicts are starting to note that “the great majority of wars fought since 1980 have been fought within nation states, not between them. . . . Such wars are ‘total’ but...