History Research Paper The_phoenix612 Version

8/3/2019 History Research Paper The_phoenix612 Version

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Gas and the Government:

Chemical Research and Military Reorganization of Science during WWIthe_phoenix612

Poison gas warfare was introduced to the Great War in April 1915 on the

battlefields surrounding Ypres, Belgium. While commonly referred to as the first wartime

use of chemical weaponry, this is untrue. Warring parties have a long, rich history of

exploiting novel ways of killing the enemy, stretching all the way back to the

Peloponnesian War when the Spartan armies burned pitch and sulfur under the walls of

Platea and Belium in the (unsuccessful) hope of choking the defenders into submission.

1

In the Crimean War, the Admiral Lord Dundonald (a renowned chemist) proposed

reducing the cities of St. Petersburg and Sevastopol with sulfur fumes. The British

sailors were to be protected by charcoal respirators developed for industrial use in the

London chemical industry, but the plan was abandoned for fears of shifting winds and

insufficient quantities of respirators.2 From this point in history, the wartime use of

chemicals were inseparable from domestic chemical industries. During the Great War,

there were but a handful of chemicals necessary for war purposes: chlorine,

hydrochloric acid, ammonia, nitric acid, sulfuric acid, acetic acid, and alcohol.3 These

basic chemicals, requisite for conventional arms production, were cornerstones of the

peaceful chemical industries and countries with established infrastructures for their

production benefitted greatly when implementing scale-up procedures.

The real innovations in the Great War, however, were in chemicals developed

and manufactured expressly for their inherent offensive capabilities. For these particular

1Amos Fries, Chemical Warfare (New York: McGraw Hill Book Company, 1921), 1

2Robert B. Edgerton, Death or Glory: The Legacy of the Crimean War(Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999), 249.

3F. A. Hessel, Chemistry in Warfare: Its Strategic Importance (New York: Hastings House, 1942), 132.


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gases there existed no infrastructure for their production, and only scattered,

disorganized infrastructure for their large-scale manufacture. For these reasons, the

United States was able to become a global leader in the production of offensive gas

weaponry by the end of the Great War. This process resulted in massive government

funding of, and interest in, primary scientific research by 1919. When the war came to a

close and disarming tendencies came to dominate domestic politics, there was a great

battle over the future of the emergent Chemical Warfare Service This battle, fought in

newspaper editorials, Senate deliberations, and academic journals, was won by the

chemists and military men already invested in the research infrastructure. The Chemical

Warfare Service was maintained at active research levels until 1934 when the Great

Depression knocked its appropriations down to a bare minimum. When the Army

ramped up for WWII, the Chemical Warfare Service was envisioned to play a huge role

in hostilities in both the European and Pacific theaters. However, political attitudes and

public opinion were never in favor of re-introducing the horrors of large-scale chemical

warfare.

Astonishingly, the US War Department did little to nothing to prepare for chemical

warfare in the two year span between its introduction at Ypres and the American

declaration of war. The only man who, at the outbreak of the war, had any experience

remotely applicable to chemical warfare was Van H. Manning, the Director of the

Bureau of Mines. The Bureau had been studying poisonous and explosive gases as

they existed in mines since its inception in 1910 under the Department of the Interior

and was developing apparatus for safe breathing in the presence of noxious gases.

Manning offered his Bureaus services to the military in February 1917. On April 3 1917


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the National Research Council created the Subcommittee on Noxious Gases, headed

by Manning and including officers from the Ordnance and Medical Corps of both the

Army and the Navy. The work carried out by this subcommittee came to be the nucleus

for research on chemical warfare and would evolve into the Research Division of the

CWS.4

One reason the Army took preparations for chemical warfare lightly is that in the

spring of 1917, the balance of chemical warfare was shifting to the defense. Anti-gas

preparations were steadily increasing in effectiveness, and dichloroethyl sulfide, better

known as mustard gas, had yet to be introduced by the Germans. Once the devastating

capabilities of mustard gas manifested on European battlefields, the Army accelerated

chemical endeavors. General Order No. 8 of July 15, 1917 created the Gas Service as

part of the American Expeditionary Force deployed to Europe.5 The Service was

charged with the conduct of the entire gas and flame service, both offense and defense

. . . and control of all experimental work pertaining to gas warfare.6 Requisitions for this

novel and multi-headed department were drawn from all over the Army: personnel and

material for offensive purposes were drawn from the Corps of Engineers, personnel and

material for defensive purposes were drawn from the Medical Corps, and all gas bombs,

shells, and similar material were supplied by the Ordnance Department.

Heading this new Service was Lt. Col Amos Fries, soon to be Col. Amos Fries.

Fries first task was staffing his Service with experienced men, of whom the US Army

4Brophy, Leo P. and George J.B. Fisher, The Chemical Warfare Service: Organizing for War(Washington D.C.:

Department of the Army, 1959), 1:4.5

Fries, 72.6

Major General A. W. Brewster, Activities of the Chemical Warfare Service, in United States Army in the World

War 1917-1919: Reports of the Commander-in-Chief, Staff Sections and Services (Washington D.C.: Center of

Military History, 1991), 15:291.


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was noticeably lacking. Two Medical Corps officers had been attached to Allied Medical

Departments, Col. James R. Church with the French Army, and Col. Harry L. Gilchrist

with the British Expeditionary Force.7 These officers, and about two hundred others,

made up the forward-deployed Gas Service providing American troops in Europe with

gas masks and limited amounts of offensive chemicals, which were mainly obtained

from the French.

Once the importance of chemical warfare was brought to the nations attention,8

118 of the nations top chemists, representing 21 universities, three industrial

companies, and three government agencies, offered aid for the war effort.9 Labs were

created across the United States to promote this research, but it was readily apparent to

Mannings Bureau and Subcommittee that domestic research projects should be

centralized and organized. American University, on the outskirts of Washington, D.C.,

had tendered use of their facilities to the war effort in April 1917 and with a $175,000

allotment from the War and Navy Departments, the American University Experiment

Station was born.10 Dr. George A. Burrell, who had been in charge of the Bureau of

Mines gas research for several years, was chosen to head the research division of the

Noxious Gas Subcommittee. Under Burrell were several engineers from the Bureau of

Mines: A.C. Fieldner, the chief chemist at the Pittsburgh Research Station, Dr. Yandell

Henderson, a Professor of physiology at Yale University, Bradley Dewey, director of an

7Brophy, 1:6.

8The British, from whom we received virtually all of our news of war proceedings, had kept the severity of

chemical attacks out of the eye of the US public for fear that the truth would only harden Americas commitment

to neutrality. Upon US entry to the war, the British had no problem shocking the reading public with tales of gas.9

Brophy, 2:5.10

Fries, 33.


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industrial research laboratory, and Warren K. Lewis, professor of Chemical Engineering

at MIT.11

The first task assigned to the Bureau of Mines in May 1917 was the provision of

25,000 gas masks to be completed and shipped overseas by July of the same year. The

necessary production was divided among companies across the country, with the main

work being done at the American Can Company in Brooklyn, New York. The first masks

were ready for testing in June and Bradley Dewey, Yandell Henderson, and George

Burrell decided to test them themselves. The test, crude but effective, consisted of

Henderson walking into a gas chamber and emptying a canister of chlorine. But for

bleached hair and socks, Henderson was unharmed.12 While these masks ultimately

proved ineffective for battlefield use, the new Gas Service had proved its worth, and in

July 1917 received $125,000 from the War Department budget to fund research into

existing and novel forms of gas warfare.

American University was only 24 years old in 1917, and required significant

improvement to capably serve as a national center for war gas research. These

improvements were made possible by a 2 million dollar budget for fiscal year 1917, and

research began in September of that year.13 Eight disparate sections of chemical

research were organized by Manning at American University: Chemical Research,

Physiological Research, Pyrotechnic Research, Chemical Manufacture, Mechanical

Research, Submarine Gases, Dirigible and Balloon Gas, and Gas Mask Examination.

11Col. George A. Burrell, The Research Division, Chemical Warfare Service, U.S.A. The Journal of Industrial and

Engineering Chemistry11 (1919), 93-94.12

Burrell, 95.13

Fries, 38.


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Thus, it was not merely a center for developing new weaponized gases, but a veritable

center of American science, funded and organized by the federal government. By the

end of the war, researchers occupied sixty purpose-built buildings on the campus.14

On June 28, 1918 the Gas Service of the AEF and the Noxious Gases

Subcommittee became the Chemical Warfare Service by General Order 62 of the War

Department.15 This Service, led by Maj. Gen. William L. Sibert16, organized every aspect

of chemical warfare under one man, from pure scientific research to the field training of

new recruits in gas attack procedures.17 The scientists working at American University,

now numbering over 1,600, strongly resisted this reorganization. They noted that under

the Bureau of Mines, the organization is complex and delicate but well articulated and

working with an efficiency and enthusiasm which have impressed us greatly. When the

War Department pushed through its reorganization in June, an editorial was published

in the Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistrywhich lamented the Presidents

decision, and remarked that the red tape of military methods would destroy the

congeniality built up among the researchers and would retard their progress.18 These

fears were never realized, however, because hostilities came to a close soon after the

adjustments were made.

14 U.S. Bureau of Education, The War Work of American Colleges and Universities during the War, U.S. Bureau of

Education, Higher Education CircularNo. 6 (Washington D.C.: 1918)15

Brewster, 15:293.16

General Pershing required a man of suitably high rank and strong personality to cut through typical bureaucratic

obstacles, and in Sibert he had his man. Sibert had previously overseen construction of the Panama Canal and had

commanded the Big Red One in France. (Brophy, 1:12)17

James E. Hewes, From Root to McNamara: Army Organization and Administration (Washington D.C.: Center of

Military History, 1975), 387-390.18

By Order of the President (editorial), The Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry10 (1918), 590.


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The Chemical Warfare Service aided the American war effort in three ways:

provision of effective gas masks, mass production of existing war gases, and

development of new chemical weapons for wartime use. Each of these

accomplishments were the purview of a separate division of the CWS, and each

deserves exposition. The development of reliable gas masks was the first and most

critical task of the CWS. As previously mentioned, the first attempt at manufacturing an

American gas mask failed, so the Research Division turned to facsimile of existing

British models, making improvements where possible. The charcoal box was enlarged

from the British model, the mouthpiece made larger and less flexible, and the technical

expertise of the Goodrich and Goodyear companies were requisitioned to produce a

high-quality gas mask for American use.19 Once a design was settled upon in March

1918, the Gas Defense Division of the CWS set about producing masks at an incredible

pace. By wars end little more than eight months later, 5,692,000 masks were produced

in the US, more than half of which came from the Long Island City Plant in New York.20

The production of war gases was a critical component not only of the American

war effort, but also of the Allied war effort as a whole. None of the war gases used in

Europe, except for chlorine, had ever been commercially produced in the United States.

Unlike Germany, whose powerful prewar chemical industry was simply augmented by

wartime appropriations, the production infrastructure had to be built from scratch in

America. Because the Federal Railroad Commission restricted transport of hazardous

chemicals to a specific sort of slow, expensive train, the decision was made to

centralize chemical production near Washington. A special plant was constructed in

19Burrell, 96.

20Fries, 49.


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Maryland near the shell-filling facilities.21 The Edgewood Arsenal division of the CWS

came to consist of all the plants on the Edgewood reservation as well as phosgene

plants in Niagara and New Jersey, bromine wells in Michigan, and a mustard gas plant

in Buffalo.22 Construction began in September 1917 and production began in January of

the next year.23 Whereas at the outset of hostilities the US Army obtained nearly all of

its poison gas (chlorine and phosgene, mainly) from the French, by the middle of 1918

the United States was outproducing England and France combined, as well as

quadrupling Germanys production of war gases; the Edgewood Arsenal alone was

producing 675 tons of war gas per week.

2425

In fact, so much toxin was produced at

Edgewood that the Army ran out of shells and began shipping gas in bulk directly to

England and France to be put into shells overseas.26 The Research Division of the CWS

was responsible for a breakthrough in the production of mustard gas, aiding both the

British and the American war efforts. Mustard gas, the most widely used and most

devastating gas used late in the war, was produced through a complicated chain of

reactions. First, ethylene (C2H4) is created by the dehydration of ethyl alcohol. It is then

reacted with hypochlorous acid to form ethylene chlorhydrin (ClCH2CH2OH) which,

when heated with hydrochloric acid, produces dichloroethyl sulfide (ClCH2CH2)2S, more

commonly known as mustard gas. This method of production was found to be

unsuitable for large scale production by US scientists, who attributed German

21Fries, 33.

22Benedict Crowell,Americas Munitions: 1917-1918 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1919), 398.

23Brophy, 2:15.

24Crowell, 396.

25Brophy, 1:12.

26Brophy, 2:18


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successes with the method to their superior chemical factories.27 Ethylene chlorohydrin,

however, was in very limited supply. Chemists of the Research Division explored

several avenues for working around this, and eventually came upon the direct reaction

of ethylene and sulfur dichloride in January 1918.28

The work done by the CWS that had the most lasting impact was the

primary chemistry research done at American University. This is not because the

chemicals developed were particularly significant but because it was in the research of

the Offense Division that full cooperation among all branches of the CWS was achieved,

and the precedents for large-scale government research projects were set. In order to

best coordinate the efforts of the more than 1,200 scientists stationed at American

University, men were organized into divisions with focused responsibilities, and projects

would be passed from division to division as they neared completion. For example,

when a new toxic substance was devised, it would first be synthesized by the Offense

Research Section. If the substance was solid under normal conditions, it was sent to the

Dispersoid Section to engineer a method for dispersal. After this was accomplished, or if

the substance was already a liquid, the Toxicological Section tested the substance for

offensive properties, including lachrymatory and vesicatory29 effects. At this stage a

committee of chemists, pharmacologists, and physiologists determined if the substance

had potential for field usage. If it did, the Chemical Production Section and the Small

Scale Manufacturing Section worked out how to produce it on a large scale: anywhere

from 50 to 2,000 pounds. If a successful method was found, it was passed on to the

27Fries, 152.

28Clarence J. West, The History of Mustard Gas, Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering 22 (1920), 541.

29Vesicatory gases are those that cause blistering upon skin contact. The most notorious example is mustard gas.


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Development Division for large-scale production. While production methods were being

devised, the Analytical Section was working in conjunction with the Defense Section to

ensure Allied troops chemical protection systems would protect them from the gas. The

Pyrotechnic Division was studying its effects when fired from shells or released from

cylinders, and the Medical Division tested its effects on animal or human subjects.30 In

just over a year of work, the Offense Chemical Research Section prepared and tested

1,600 gases by these methods, but only a very few passed all the necessary tests for

production.31

In order to be selected as a war gas, a chemical had to pass a variety of tests.

Foremost among these was that the gas must have a useful physiological effect. This

was not always lethality: brombenzyl cyanide was produced for its tear-producing effect,

diphenylchloroarsine caused acute sneezing fits, and chloropicrin induced nausea.32

The chemicals raw materials must have been readily available: many iodine-based

compounds were rejected on these grounds. The physical and chemical properties of

the vaporized chemical must also be suitable for military purposes. Cyanide gas was

rejected by the US Army because its vapor density was too low, and dense clouds

would not form. With regards to chemical properties, reactivity to moisture and iron were

critical. Several gases were rejected because they hydrolysed too easily, and several

others reacted poorly to being contained in iron artillery shells for the six month delay

between shell filling in America and firing in Europe. Hydrogen Sulfide was rejected for

war use rather belatedly when the British discovered that, when vaporized, the gas was

30Fries, 40-42.

31William L. Sibert,Annual Reports Chief of Chemical Warfare Service (Washington D.C.: GPO, 1919), 187.

32Crowell, 395-407.


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extremely flammable and suffered a series of explosions in their own trenches.33 The

most significant gases discovered by the Research Division during World War I were

Lewisite and chloroacetophenone.

Lewisite, a vesicant similar to mustard gas but several times as dangerous, was

considered the most valuable secret of the Chemical Warfare Service at the close of

hostilities due to its production method. The drive to find alternative methods of mustard

gas production had led chemists to explore the reactions of ethylene and acetylene on

inorganic chlorides.34 One such reaction, acetylene and arsenic trichloride with

aluminum chloride as a catalyst, was discovered by a Captain Winford Lee Lewis in

April 1918. A purpose-built plant was constructed in Ohio for production of Lewisite, and

production began in September.35 Lewisite held several key advantages over mustard

gas: it was more toxic than mustard gas, it was less persistent, allowing it to be used

immediately preceding an attack, and it was easier to manufacture.36 Unfortunately,

Lewisite was not manufactured in scale in time to be used in the planned 1919

offensive. It was retained and designated a primary chemical weapon by the US Army

until 1943, when its limitations became known: that its effects are immediately felt,

which reduced exposure times, and the British development of anti-Lewisite, which

prevents Lewisite burns.37

33W.D. Bancroft, History of the Chemical Warfare Service in the United States (Washington, D.C.: Chemical Warfare

Service, 1919), 57.34

Fries, 187.35

Vilensky, Joel A. and Pandy R. Sinish, Weaponry: Lewisite Americas World War I Chemical Weapon, MHQ:

The Quarterly Journal of MilitaryHistoryVol. 17 (Spring 2005), 82.36

Augustin M. Prentiss, Chemicals in War: A Treatise on Chemical Warfare (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1937), 192.37

Vilensky, 83.


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Chloroacetophenone is a lachrymator, or tear-producing agent, which was first

synthesized in May 1917 by the Research Station of the CWS. Lachrymators proved

useful toward the end of the war when armies realized that they could dramatically

reduce their opponents combat effectiveness simply by forcing them to don masks.

Lachrymators were ideal chemicals for this purpose because they were active at far

lesser concentrations than were the killing or vesicating gases. At the time, the best

lachrymator was the French brombenzyl cyanide, and chloroacetophenone was several

times more effective at producing lachrymation.38 Additionally, chloroacetophenone was

a solid, making it easier to handle and distribute, and was easier to produce than was

brombenzyl cyanide. It was not distributed in time for wartime use in WWI, but it has

become the standard tear gas for police, army, and riot forces, now known by the trade

name Mace.

As illustrated by the examples of new gas development, as well as improved

methods of synthesis, the Chemical Warfare Service was critical for coordinating

American research efforts with allied research efforts, as well as coordinating military

research units with university scientists across the nation. WWI was the first time the

government had recognized one of the pure sciences on its own terms and incorporated

primary scientific research into military structure. As a direct result of governmental

involvement, the 1,200 scientists funded by the federal government as part of the CWS

produced results at an unprecedented pace at a time when their nation needed them

most, and it was a direct result of governmental involvement. The wartime editor of the

Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistrynoted with some pride the exemplary

38Fries, 16.


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work accomplished by a joint effort between the military and the scientific community,

and predicted that future crises could be solved in a similar manner.39 Due in large part

to the proven success of government funded and organized scientific endeavors, the

US Army was quick to use the cutting edge of science in the next great conflict, and

turned a slight advantage in the new field of atomic physics into a war-winning asset.

It did not take long for American thinkers to see what benefits new forms of

scientific organization could provide. As early as 1920 Senator Elihu Root, a prominent

statesman and attorney, remarked, Science has been arranging, classifying,

methodizing, simplifying everything except itself. It has made possible the tremendous

modern development of the power of organization which has so multiplied the effective

power of human effort as to make the differences from the past seem to be of kind

rather than degree. . . . the effective power of a great number of scientific men may be

increased by organization just as the effective power of a great number of laborers may

be increased by military discipline.40 However, with the Armistice came tremendous

uncertainty regarding the future of the CWS. By June 1919, the 20,000 men serving in

the Chemical Warfare Service at the time of the Armistice had been drawn down to

589.41 The General Order providing for the existence of the CWS was only valid until six

months after the close of hostilities,42 and it soon became apparent that both military

and public opinion were set firmly against chemical warfare.

39Charles H. Herty, The Reserves of the Chemical Warfare Service (Washington, D.C.: National Research Council,

1921), 17.40

George Ellery Hale, The Possibilities of Coperation in Research, in The New World of Science, ed. Robert M.

Yerkes (New York: Books for Libraries Press, 1920), 394-395.41

Sibert, 15.42

Brophy, 1:15.


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The Secretary of War, Newton D. Baker, was of the opinion that peacetime

research and development were of little concern to the Army, and that what little must

be done, could be done by the Army Corps of Engineers. The Chief of Staff, Peyton C.

March, was also adamant that the CWS should be abolished.43 Professional soldiers

also despised chemical warfare; they viewed it as corrupting the expertise and honor of

their profession, and representing the ruthlessness and inhumanity of modern war.44

Public opinion was dominated by an intense desire to return to isolationism.

Accompanying this desire was tremendous pressure on the Army to demobilize as

much as possible and return to prewar levels of spending and activity.

45

Several high-ranking Army officers disagreed with these notions, however.

Brigadier General Amos Fries, Chief of the Chemical Warfare Service, was obviously

supportive of its continued existence, as was General William L. Sibert, who preceded

Fries in his post at the head of the CWS. Benedict Crowell, the Assistant Secretary of

War in charge of munitions, was also a strong supporter of the CWS. He was educated

as a chemist and believed that the future of warfare lay in the field of chemistry. 46 Most

importantly, though, the American chemical industry was attempting to sway public

opinion in favor of chemical weaponry in the wake of the Treaty of Versailles. One

provision of the Treaty, Article 172, demanded that Germany hand over all chemical

processes [including drawings of plants, manufacturing instructions, and reports of

research to date] used during the war.47 As Germany had, by far, the worlds most

43Brophy, 1:16.

44Frederic J. Brown, Chemical Warfare: A Study in Restraints (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), 10.

45Brophy, 2:28.

46Brophy, 1:16.

47Brown, 53.


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advance chemical industry at the outbreak of war, this provided American chemical

companies access to invaluable trade and military secrets. In order to take full

advantage of this newfound wealth, however, the chemical industry had to alter the

American publics hostility to all things chemical. The industry, and particularly DuPont

Company, saw the solution as a matter of educating three groups: first, the American

people as the ultimate consumers; second, for the consuming industries; and third, for

the national legislators. A massive educational campaign was launched in 1919 that

lasted until 1925. 48 Editorials were written in major scientific journals.49 Special editions

of New York newspapers were written, and full-page editorials were sent to 40 other

major papers.50 Speakers were even sent out across the nation to stump for the cause

of the Chemical Warfare Service and its attending organization. The Journal of

Industrial and Engineering Chemistrypublished editorials calling for unity among

chemists51 and reprinted General Pershings testimony to Congress in favor of

permanently establishing the Chemical Warfare Service.

The Chemical Warfare Service under Gen. Fries mounted a propaganda

campaign to rehabilitate the image of chemical warfare and portray it was the most

humane form of killing in modern warfare. Statistics were presented by the Chief

Medical Officer of the CWS to show that, if the most humane weapons were so by

nature of their ratios of wounded to killed, chemical weapons were, in fact, the highest

form of killing. 2,039,329 men of the AEF arrived in France; 258,338 ended up

casualties in battle. Of these, 34,249 were killed and less than 200 were killed by action

48Brown, 57.

49The Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry11 (1919), 810-820..

50Brown, 58.

51Chemical Warfare Service Endangered, The Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry12 (1920), 2-3.


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of gas. Of the 224,089 men hospitalized, 70,552 were gas victims and 1,221 of these

died. Thus, of the 70,000 AEF men gassed in WWI, 2 percent died while of the 187,000

men wounded by conventional weapons, 24.3 percent died. This was hailed as proof of

the superiority of chemical weapons: they can win a battle while killing or maiming the

fewest number of soldiers.52

The most effective argument for the continuation of the CWS was that the United

States must continue to be prepared for the outbreak of future chemical warfare. This

argument was, perhaps, too successful. After waging an immense propaganda

campaign to awaken the American public to the dangers of chemical warfare, there now

existed public pressures to prohibit chemical warfare altogether. This pressure

manifested in the Washington Arms Conference of 1922 and the Geneva Convention of

1925. The CWS won its fight for survival and was made a permanent branch of the

Army equal to the Infantry, Artillery, and Air Corps, under the National Defense Act of

1920,53 but it now had to fight to prove its relevance in a world that was abolishing gas

warfare. This was attempted through another propaganda campaign detailing the

peacetime uses of war gases.

These peacetime uses were chronicled in the Journal of Industrial and

Engineering Chemistryunder the titles Contributions from the Chemical Warfare

Service, U.S.A. Notable examples included the treatment of respiratory disease,

insecticides, and riot control agents. Immediately following the 1918 influenza epidemic,

chlorine was touted as a cure for many respiratory diseases, including the common cold

52Harry L. Gilchrist,A Comparative Study of World War Casualties from Gas and Other Weapons (Washington, D.C.:

GPO, 1928).53

Brophy, 2:24.


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and whooping cough. This radical idea was popularized because there was not a single

case of the influenza reported among the workers handling chlorine, while the disease

devastated the other departments. After some clinical trials, and after President

Coolidge had a cold successfully treated by chlorine therapy, therapeutic chlorine

became highly fashionable. The clinical trials were fraught with scientific errors,

including the absence of control groups and relying on self-reporting of symptoms and

curative effects by trial subjects, but the trials and the subsequent publicity succeeded

in ridding the public of their fear of chlorine.54

Researchers first evaluated the potential value of war gases as insecticides in

1922. At that time, one of the most pressing concerns facing agriculture was the boll

weevil ravaging the Southern cotton industry. A mustard gas and charcoal compound

was found promising, but it proved too volatile for safe handling. Sodium fluorosilicate

was eventually the compound recommended by the CWS researchers.55 Other

compounds were discovered for use treating the bottoms of ships against barnacles,

treating docks against marine borers, and for ship fumigation.56

The 1924 annual report of the Chief of the Chemical Warfare Service singles out

the peacetime use of tear gas by police forces as the outstanding example of the value

of the work underway at Edgewood Arsenal during peacetime. General Fries later

stated that every week . . . gas is used by Police Departments in saving lives of

policemen and innocent bystanders and in overcoming criminals in barricaded buildings

54Harry L. Gilchrist, Chlorine gas Its Uses a Hundred Years Ago. Wisconsin Medical Journal23 (1924) 235-238.

55H.W. Walker and J. E. Mills, Chemical Warfare Service Boll Weevil Investigation Progress Report,Journal of

Industrial and Engineering Chemistry19 (1927), 710-711.56

Amos Fries, By-products of chemical warfare,Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry20 (1928), 1079,

1081-1082.


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without a shot being fired or without danger to anyone.57 This potential application was

first publicized to the Senate in 1919 by then-Colonel Fries:

Fries: I might make this observation, that is we are going to have to police

Mexico or the Philippines again, or Haiti or San Domingo, or any other placewhere people are not equipped with gas masks, there is no substance or no halfdozen substances that can rout them so easily as gas. You can kill them if youwant to with the poisonous gas or simply blind them temporarily with the tear gas,and then handle them almost any way you see fit.Senator Chamberlain: The beauty about the tear gas is that it puts a man out ofbusiness so far as fighting is concerned, but does not kill him?Fries: Yes. As a matter of fact the police authorities of the United States havebegun to take that up in regard to routing desperadoes who get into houses. Allthat is bound to be considered sooner or later.58

Fries used these arguments extensively in his letters to newspapers, but it was

ultimately widespread domestic unrest, instead of foreign unrest or isolated

desperadoes, that caused law enforcement to call upon the aid of the CWS. The fear of

spreading Communism and the increasingly violent labor strikes in 1919 led the New

York Police Department to request tear gas grenades for use against civilian protests,

and provided a much-needed publicity surge for the CWS. In a 1919 letter to General

Sibert, ret. Admiral A.C. Dillingham, the Director for Public Safety in Norfolk, VA,

requested a tear gas delivery system to deal with his great deal of trouble with the

Negro element that contained no power, in order to minimize the danger to the public.

The War Department, however, refused to supply police departments or National Guard

units with any tear gas grenades until General Pershing became Chief of Staff under the

Harding Administration in 1921. Barely three weeks later, the first demonstration of tear

gas by a police force took place in Philadelphia, where a mob of 200 policemen were

unable to capture six other policemen armed with tear gas grenades. Four days later a

57Amos Fries, Letter to Editor of the Washington Post, July 6, 1925.

58U.S. Senate, Hearings on H.R. 5227, An Act Making Appropriations for the Support of the Army for the Fiscal

Year Ending June 30, 1920, 66th

Congress, 1st

Session, June 18, 1919, p. 291.


19/22

similar demonstration was held by the NYPD, and both departments eagerly adopted

the new tools and formed gas units within their forces by February 1922. 59 By

September 1923, over 600 cities had equipped their police forces with tear gas, and the

CWS published a pamphlet titled Provisional Instructions for the Control of Mobs by

Chemical Warfare.6061 The Red Scare that prompted the introduction of tear gas had

subsided by 1921 when the gas became available, but the police use of gas against

individual criminals nonetheless boosted the image of chemical warfare for the public.

By the mid-1920s, the public had shed their irrational fear of gas that was borne of the

horrors of the battlefield thanks to the development and dissemination of peacetime

uses for gas. The Chemical Warfare Service was successfully able to maintain its close

ties with the American community of academic chemists, ties which would pay

dividends as America prepared to go to war twenty years later. Although appropriations

levels remained low, and suffered as a result of the Great Depression, they were

sufficient to maintain an active research force at Edgewood Arsenal until the re-eruption

of European hostilities in 1939.

The United States participated in WWI for less than two years, but this time was

sufficient for great strides to be made in science-government relations. The federal

government became aware, for the first time, that science had great potential for

winning a war. In order to utilize this potential, the nations scientific community was

organized and mobilized under military structure and leadership. No longer were

researchers sent to fight on the front lines, from this point on these researchers were

59William A. McGarry, Philadelphias tear bombs and mobs, Scientific American 125 (1921), 197, 209-211.

60New York Times, Sept. 17, 1923, p. 1.

61Chemical Warfare Service, Provisional Instructions for the Control of Mobs by Chemical Warfare, (Washington,

D.C., 1922).


20/22

sent to centralized research institutions, to collaborate with their fellows for the

betterment of the war effort. While initially skeptical of this arrangement, American

chemists were impressed by the work of the Research Division of the Chemical Warfare

Service at American University, and were subsequently much more accepting of similar

arrangements in WWII. The programs initiated during WWI were phased out or proved

irrelevant by the unexpected trends in the next war, but they laid the foundation for a

symbiotic relationship between scientific research and military organization that would

make it possible for the United States to fight and defeat two formidable enemies in a

global, two-front war thirty years later.


21/22

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