A SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY.

Shannon News, 5 September 1924, Page 1

A SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY.

DISTRIBUTED BY AEROPLANES. Scientists have discovered a deadly new poison. It can easily be distributed by aeroplanes. It is invisible and has no smell. No one who breathes it will be aware that he is inhaling death, but within from six to twelve hours he will die in terrible agony. Professor C. Delisle Burns, of London University, said to a “Daily Express" representative recently:— “The gas is of such a nature that it sinks to the ground and will remain deadly in basements or tube- railways for two days. Combatant nations at the end of the war knew of this gas, but they were unable to manufacture it in sufficient quantities to use it. Chemists have now solved this problem.

“While the Washington Conference on disarmaments was sitting, 200 oi the best young chemists in the United States were engaged at Edgewood Arsenal, near Washington, in research on the manufacture of-the gas,,America now has immense supplies of it. “Gas masks will be the only protection, but you cannot train a civilian, population to use gas masks in a few minutes."

Major Victor Lefebure, a great authority on chemical; warfare, said that at the end of the war there were indications that the Germans were manufacturing in a crude form a more terrible gas than any then in use, and that scientists have since then worked steadily towards ; perfecting this gas. “It will be possible," adde Major Lefebure, “for a nation which knows the secret of a really deadly gas to put such a gas barrier round their, country that for days no army could cross their territory. “About two tons of gas can be carried; by. one aeroplane, and such an amount would spread death . over a quarter of a mile radius of the spot at which it was discharged."