The following pages, therefore, are an attempt to represent the salient points
in the development of chemical warfare, its causes, results, and future.
Such an attempt cannot limit itself to merely British developments, and this
is not a final detailed memoir of British chemical warfare. Further, in
considering the future, we examine another aspect of chemical warfare.
Facts lead us to believe that it was purely the most open and obvious
activity in a whole campaign of chemical aggression which had effective
unity of conception and direction long before the war started.

Need for a Balanced View of Chemical Warfare.--The facts of chemical
warfare have probably been less ventilated than those of any other
important war development. Yet no subject has aroused more general and
intense feeling. Tanks, aircraft, the different campaigns, enemy memoirs,
and a variety of war subjects, have received a considerable measure
of publicity, some more than full measure. Grave questions are pending
in which the chemical aspect of national defence is a prominent factor.
However willing the individual concerned, he cannot make a sound judgment
on the brief technical or popular garbled versions which have appeared.
One searches in vain for balanced and detailed statements on the question.
This may be due in no way to lack of intention, but to lack of opportunity.
Therefore, no excuse is needed for this contribution, but rather
an apology for the obscurity which has so far surrounded the subject.
What is the cause of this emotional or almost hysterical background from
which a clear definition of the matter is only now beginning to emerge?
Circumstances are to blame; the first open act of chemical warfare
decided the matter.

This event, the first German cloud gas attack at Ypres, arriving at
the peak of allied indignation against a series of German abuses,
in particular with regard to the treatment of prisoners,