A DEADLY POISON.

Taranaki Daily News, 31 July 1919, Page 6

A DEADLY POISON.

MAY KILL WAR. i SINGLE DROP ON THE HAND pkov.es fatal. At a recent war exhibition in Washington tjiere was shown for the first time a small bottle containing what is claimed to be the .sadliest poison ever known. This strictly-guarded war secret was •developed in the Bureau ef Mines by Professor Lee Lewis, of the NorthWestern University, Evans,ton, Illinois. It was manufactured in a speciallybuilt plarft snear Cleveland, called the "Mousetrap," because every workman entering 1 * the stockade signed an agreement not to leave the eleven-acre space , until the war was won. The secret was thus protected. The poison is called Lewisite, af.ter its inventor, and extraordinary claims are made for it. Ten aeroplanes carrying this stuff would have wiped out, it is said, every vestige of life, animal and vegetable, in Berlin. One day's output could have destroyed all life on Manhattan Isknd. Three thousand tons of Lewisite were available for the American front in France on March Ist. When tha armistice was signed Lewisite was being manufactured at the rate of ten tons a day. According to accounts published in America, one drop on the human hand would penetrate to the blood, reach the heart, and kill the victim in agony. The specimen at Washington is set upon a pedestal, and completely isolated from the public, being guarded night and day. Allowing a high percentage for exaggeration, the fact remains that, unless .the above claims are entirely misleading, Lewisite, acting as an "intensified mustard gas, makes war so utterly destructive as to overshadow every other consideration. With this manufacture proceeding, and the long-distanco flying reported daily, no city anywhere will be safe unless war is absolutely prevented by the League of' Nations enforcing total disarmament. In face of the threatened peril (states an exchange),] most of the discussions at Paris seem irrelevant find trivial. ' ' Only scientists can say whether, Lewi- J ite and similar products which chemists are investigating possess; all the deadly qualities above indicated, but there can be no doubt as ,to the inevitable trend of the investigations, which can only cul- j minate in the production of war material, the use of which, if permitted, would destroy the human Tace- I