Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
World
came out, Augustin Prentiss'
Chemical in War
(1937) appeared.
Although it was not aimed at a popular market, it was the most compre-
hensive evaluation of chemical warfare available in English (Prentiss
1937).
'Security' was quite different from all the other chapters in the topic.
It was very brief at 12 pages, tied as shortest with the introductory chap-
ter 'Nature Points the Way'. The chapter was also very vague compared
to the lists and descriptions that accompanied the other sections. There
was no mention of the U.S. Chemical Warfare Service, the main source
of chemical weapons for the American forces in World War I. In fact, no
specific war chemicals were referred to by name and Morrison did not
name a single chemist, unlike the other chapters that list materials and
note the work of famous scientists. About a third of the chapter is de-
voted to fire fighting, police work, and safety at sea rather than warfare.
Morrison deals with actual gas warfare in a mere two paragraphs, com-
paring it to perfume.
The most important characteristic of effective “poison gases” (using the
term with reservation) is that they must penetrate and distribute them-
selves quickly toward their objective. In this respect, they resemble per-
fumes. The reservoir of knowledge on which any nation must draw in the
event of war is its industries of synthetic perfume. Few “poison gases”
are actually lethal poisons. [Ibid., p. 237]
Rather than seeing chemical weapons as the scourge of modern war,
Morrison portrayed them as a relatively minor innovation, and went on to
argue that other forms of chemistry were responsible for improvements
in the lives of soldiers in battle because of better sanitation and medicine.
Although Morrison did not go as far as some supporters of chemical
warfare in claiming them to be more humane than traditional weapons,
he did say that chemical weapons were here to stay.
Regardless of either the effectiveness or the disastrous consequences of
using “poison gases”, they will continue to be employed whenever a na-
tion at war feels that its interests will be served by such use. This is a
situation which has become an acknowledged fact and can never be con-
trolled by international agreement. [Ibid., p. 235]
