Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 February 1917 — NEW GERMAN GAS ATTACKS ARE UNSEEN [ARTICLE]

NEW GERMAN GAS ATTACKS ARE UNSEEN

Invisible Asphyxiating Fluid Tried Against French Trenches on Western Front.

SMELL GIVES FIRST WARNING Men Are Often Overcome Before Realizing Their Peril—Water Condenses New Gas Into Visibility—Masks Are Effective. Paris.—A new asphyxiating gas, deadlier than any ever used before, and also having the quality of invisibility, is being used by the Germans on the western front. To date the gas has not been used in any heavy attacks, and for this reason the French officials believe that it is still in its experimental stages. However, small emissions of the gas have been tried by the Germans with striking effects, although counter-attacks have always enabled the French to retake the trenches they evacuated. _ The first warning of the new invisible gas is the smell. There is no wave of gray-green vapor rolling toward the trenches; but water condenses it into visibility, and in the sectors of the front where it has been used the pollus have provided shallow ditches of water in front of their trenches to give them warning of the gas. Crumple Up and Fall. Those who have experienced the new gas and lived to describe it assert that the first few inhalations of it do not produce the strangling suffocation that the old visible gas did. On the contrary, the new gas has a sickening, sweetish smell, and a man may fill bis lungs with it «everaLtlme&. before realizing what tt-is. The effect then is to cause the person to crumpld up and

fall; he has not the strength to tr" to run away. Like the old visible gas, the new gas is much heavier than air, and therefore rolls into the trenches and abrls. Once asphyxiating gas finds its way into a wind-protected spot, such as. the angle of a trench, it takes days for it to disseminate Itself. It even “hangs” to barbed wire for hours. Frequently men have been “gased” by entering a portion of a trench 72 hours after the gas waves had rolled into it. Rain does much to beat down and break up the gas clouds, however. The hew French gas masks are as effective against the invisible gas as against the old gas.