# The Next War: An Appeal to Common Sense/Chapter 4

CHAPTER IV
THE NEW WARFARE
Now let us take up one by one the new factors in warfare introduced by the Great War of 1914–18, and see what effects they had on that war, what inevitable or probable effects on “the next war.” To make it all easier to follow, let us begin with that factor which we can grasp most readily—the business of killing. Here, in treating of the past, I shall take testimony of the war itself mostly from my own direct or second-hand observations, extending from the Battle of Mons to the Battle of the Argonne; and in speculating on the future mostly from the sayings and writings of professional soldiers, many of them—though not all—thorough believers in militarism and “the next war.”
After the Second Battle of Ypres lifted the lid, those men of science, those high technicians, who had put themselves at the service of armies, experimented with new methods of killing. Liquid flame—burning men alive—was introduced on the Western front. This proved of only limited usefulness. The British introduced the tanks. These were important to the general change in warfare, as I shall ​show later; but they added nothing to the direct process of destroying life. Gas seemed by all odds the most promising of the new weapons. That simple chlorine which the Germans used in 1915 gave place to other gases more complex and more destructive to human body-cells. At first released only in clouds and dependent upon a favorable wind for their effect, the chemicals which generated these gases were later loaded into shells and projected miles beyond any danger to the army which employed them.
As gas improved, so did the defence against it. The crude mouth-pads, consisting of a strip of gauze soaked in “anti-chlorine” chemicals, which the women of England rushed to the Front after Second Ypres, were succeeded by more secure and cumbersome masks. The standard mask worn by the Americans in 1918 was a complex machine. It was cleverly constructed to fit the face air-tight; its tank held antidotes for all known German gases. However, this was an imperfect protection, because men could not or would not wear it all the time. It took the sternest discipline to make troops keep on their masks even in time of danger. Surprise gas-bombardments were always catching them unmasked. A slight leak was fatal. In that stage of chemical warfare, the losses from gas-shells in proportion to the quantity used, were at least as great as those from high-explosive shells.
Yet the mask was a protection; let us therefore ​study to beat it. In the spring attack of 1918, the Germans introduced their “mustard gas.” Unlike its forerunners, it was poisonous to the skin as well as to the lungs. Breathed, it was deadly; where it touched the skin, it produced terrible burns which resisted all ordinary treatment. These wounds were not fatal unless they covered great areas of the body. In that, mustard gas was unsatisfactory.
Now in all the experiments following Second Ypres, the chemists had in mind three qualities of the ideal killing gas. First, it should be invisible, thus introducing the element of surprise. The early, crude gases, even in small quantities, betrayed their presence by the tinge they gave the atmosphere. Second, it should be a little heavier than the atmosphere; it should tend to sink, so as to penetrate dugouts and cellars. Third, it should poison—not merely burn—all exposed areas of the body. American ingenuity solved the problem. At the time of the Armistice, we were manufacturing for the campaign of 1919 our Lewisite gas. It was invisible; it was a sinking gas, which would search out the refugees of dugouts and cellars; if breathed, it killed at once—and it killed not only through the lungs. Wherever it settled on the skin, it produced a poison which penetrated the system and brought almost certain death. It was inimical to all cell-life, animal or vegetable. Masks alone were of no use against it. Further, it had fifty-five times the “spread” of any poison gas hitherto used in the war. ​An expert has said that a dozen Lewisite air bombs of the greatest size in use during 1918 might with a favorable wind have eliminated the population of Berlin. Possibly he exaggerated, but probably not greatly. The Armistice came; but gas research went on. Now we have more than a hint of a gas beyond Lewisite. It cannot be much more deadly; but in proportion to the amount of chemical which generates it, the spread is far greater. A mere capsule of this gas in a small grenade can generate square rods and even acres of death in the absolute. . . .
So much at present for gas. It is the new factor, the one which may hold the greatest promise for future improvement in war. But there has been much improvement in certain methods already known and used, which in future wars may be auxiliary to gas. There was the old, stock weapon of modern wars—the tube from which hard substances were projected by chemical explosion—in short, the gun. In proportion to initial cost, the power of the gun and of the auxiliary explosion its chemical had increased enormously. The smokeless TNT and other high explosives employed in this war were but little more expensive, pound for pound, than the old black powder of past wars; in effect they were incomparably more destructive. Men in war defended themselves against this increased destructive power by an old method made new; they burrowed deep into the inert earth. But even at that, destruction proceeded faster than the defence against ​destruction—hence the unprecedented death-list of this war.
When we came to the vital element of property —the accumulated wealth of the world—we find the disparity between cost and effect much greater.
Let us reason here by example: the battle of Waterloo, whose glories and horrors Europe sang for a hundred years, resolved itself at one stage into a struggle for Hougoumont Château. All through the battle, French and British regiments, supported by artillery, were fighting for that group of buildings. The guide to the Château points out to the tourist the existing marks of artillery fire and the restorations. A corner knocked off from the chapel, a tiny outhouse battered down, a few holes in the walls no bigger at most than a wash-tub—that is the extent of the damage. Now while it is impossible to make an accurate estimate, it is still quite certain that the damage to Hougoumont Château was smaller in money value than the cost of the cannon-balls, shells and gun-powder which caused it. By contrast: during 1916, the Germans dropped into the town of Nancy some of their 380-millimetre shells—the largest and most expensive generally used in the war. The cost of such shells was probably between three and four thousand dollars. I was in Nancy during one such bombardment, when a big school house was hit directly. It seemed literally to have melted. In restoring it after the war, the French had to rebuild from the ground. And that school house cost more than two hundred thousand dollars. As a ​general rule, when a shell of the Great War hit a building, it destroyed much more value in property than its own cost plus that of its projecting charge. The shells which missed are aside from this discussion; for the artillerymen of Napoleon’s army missed just as often in proportion.
Yet Nature always imposes limits on human ingenuity. We arrive at a point beyond which we cannot much further improve any given device. Military experts generally agree that we have about reached that impasse with guns and their explosive projectiles. The “Big Bertha” which bombarded Paris from a distance of seventy miles was only an apparent exception. It was not a real improvement; it was a “morale gun,” useful to the “psychological campaign” of the Germans. It had no accuracy; the gunners “ranged” it on Paris in general, and the shells, according to atmospheric conditions, fell anywhere over an area some four or five miles across.
No; there will be no great improvements in guns and high-explosive projectiles. Even if we have not reached the limit of invention, other methods of destroying life and property hold out much more promise. Among these is the aeroplane. There, we have not nearly reached the barrier set by Nature upon Ingenuity.
ARTILLERY FIRE IN 1815
Hougoumont Château. During the Battle of Waterloo, it was bombarded all day by Napoleon's cannon. Result: A small out-building wrecked (ruin in the foreground), a corner at the peak of the chapel (to the left) knocked off, and some small holes, since repaired, in the front wall and the roofs.
ARTILLERY FIRE IN 1915
A château in Northern France. It was wrecked by a single big-calibre German shell.
To adopt again the terminology of artillery; as the aeroplane grew in range, so did it grow in calibre. The bombs dropped on Paris in 1914 were not much bigger than a grape-fruit; the bombs prepared for Berlin in 1919 were eight feet high and carried half a ton of explosive or gas-generating chemicals. Not only were they greater in themselves than any gun-shell, but they carried a heavier bursting-charge in proportion to their size. As you increase the calibre and range of a gun, you must increase the thickness of the steel casing which forms the shell, and correspondingly reduce the proportion of explosives or gas-forming chemical. But an air bomb—which is dropped, not fired—needs only a very thin casing. A big shell is in bulk mostly steel; an air bomb is mostly chemical. It was in shells like these that we would have packed our ​Lewisite gas had we decided to ‘‘eliminate all life in Berlin.”
However, air-bombardment was during the Great War essentially inaccurate. A gun, in land operations, is fired from a solid base; the artilleryman can aim at his leisure. A bomb is dropped from a base which is not only in rapid motion but partakes of the instability of the air; the bombing aviator must make an inconceivably rapid snapshot. Still, even at this crude stage, air-fire grew much more accurate. In 1914 and 1915, the bombs seldom hit their objective, unless that objective were a city in general. By 1918, they were usually hitting on or near their targets. It was still, however, mostly a matter of individual skill, not of accurate machine-work.
THE INCREASING SIZE OF BOMBS
(Left) A bomb in 1914-15. A sample of the largest aerial bomb used at the beginning of the war.
(Right) A bomb in 1918. This bomb carried an explosive charge of one ton, and was prepared to bomb Berlin in 1919.