The Riddle of the Rhine: Chemical Strategy in Peace and War

Abstract

EVERY great war within the last hundred years has been characterised by some new development in the means of offence, based upon the applications of science. Each successive war, in fact, is, in greater or less degree, a reflex of contemporary scientific knowledge concerning the most effective practicable measures by which belligerents may destroy human life; but it was reserved for the last great war—the greatest of all wars—to witness the introduction of a method of warfare which, in its savage ferocity and in its callous disregard of human suffering, is unparalleled in history. April 22, 1915, when the Germans sent great volumes of the deadly chlorine gas against the Allied lines, is a black-letter day in the annals of warfare. It was thought at first to have been a last desperate effort to dislodge the French from a position which all recognised methods of fighting had failed to take. The truth, however, is now beginning to appear. It was the first trial of a new war method, deliberately conceived and worked out by the Germans, even before the outbreak of war, and in flagrant disregard of their undertaking at the Hague Convention to abstain from the use of asphyxiating or deleterious gases. According to the author of the book before us,

The Riddle of the Rhine: Chemical Strategy in Peace and War.

By Victor Lefebure. Pp. 279. (London: W. Collins, Sons, and Co., Ltd., 1921.) 10s. 6d. net.