ANOTHER GERMAN GAS.

Taihape Daily Times, 8 January 1918, Page 2

ANOTHER GERMAN GAS.

ANOTHER GERMAN GAS. The latest devilish device of the Germans, according to E. T. Bransdon, writing in Popular Mechanics, is a gas that is almost odorless, quite invisible, and that does not get in its deadly work until about six hours after the fragile shells that contain it burst. Then all who have breathed it go into convulsions, many go \mad. Mr. Bronsden makes the remarkable statement that when the Germans threw it into Armentieres recently'no less than four thousand persons died in agony as a result of it. This gas is called arsine, and is none other than nrseniureted hydrogen, one of the deadliest fumes known 'to the chemist.

jlt spreads slowly and is so heavy, \ tliat no wind short of a -hurricane can J dispel it. It creeps along the ground, I seeking ever the deepest places, and therefore penetrates not only trenches but dugouts. ''One -whiff," writes Mr Bransdon, " and it does not have to be a lungful by any means, is certain death. There is no remedy or antidote known to medical or chemical science. It attaeks the big nerve centres, causing aberrations and convulsion, with death in half an hour or so, after the first symptoms are noticed." But he points out that the Germans can use this gas very rarely, for they have scarcely any arsenic from which to make it, while the 'Allies, if they decide to use it against the Germans, have an unlimited supply.