How, asks the reader, can this be? Are we not aware of the poison
gas campaign? Indeed, we have not yet grasped the simple technical
facts of the case, and these are merely the outward signs of a
deep-rooted menace whose nature, activities, and potentialities
are doubly important because so utterly unsuspected by those whom
they most threaten.

How many of us, for example, realise that the Germans relied
mainly on gas for success in the great March assault of 1918,
which threatened to influence the destinies of the world.
Yet Ludendorff goes out of his way to tell us how much he counted upon it.
How many understand that the 1918 hostilities were no longer a war
of explosives. German guns were firing more than fifty per cent.
of gas and war chemical. But a deep study of such war facts reveals
a much more significant matter.

All are aware of the enormous national enterprises built to fulfil our
explosives programme. With mushroom-like growth chemical establishments
of a magnitude hitherto unknown in England arose to meet our crying needs.
What was the German equivalent, and where were the huge reservoirs of gas
and war chemical which filled those countless shells? Krupp, of Essen,
loomed large in the mind of every Allied citizen and soldier.
There lay the sinews of war in the making. But the guns were useless
without their message. Who provided it? A satisfactory answer
to this question demands an examination of the great German I.G.,
the Interessen Gemeinschaft, the world power in organic chemical enterprise,
whose monopoly existence threatened to turn the tide of war against us.
This organisation emerges from the war with renewed and greater strength.
Our splendid but improvised factories drained the vital forces of
the nation, and now lie idle, while German war chemical production fed