the Special Correspondent of the _Vossiches Zeitung_. He said:
"I devote a special chapter to this plague of our Somme warriors.
It is not only when systematic gas attacks are made that they
have to struggle with this devilish and intangible foe."
He refers to the use of gas shell, and says: "This invisible
and perilous spectre of the air threatens and lies in wait
on all roads leading to the front."

In a despatch dated December 23rd, 1916, from Field-Marshal
Sir Douglas Haig, G.C.B., the situation is ably summarised:
"The employment by the enemy of gas and of liquid flame
as weapons of offence compelled us not only to discover ways
to protect our troops from their effects but also to devise
means to make use of the same instruments of destruction.
Great fertility of invention has been shown, and very great credit
is due to the special personnel employed for the rapidity and success
with which these new arms have been developed and perfected,
and for the very great devotion to duty they have displayed
in a difficult and dangerous service. The army owes its thanks
to the chemists, physiologists, and physicists of the highest
rank who devoted their energies to enable us to surpass the enemy
in the use of a means of warfare which took the civilised world
by surprise. Our own experience of the numerous experiments
and trials necessary before gas and flame could be used,
of the preparations which had to be made for their manufacture,
and of the special training required for the personnel employed,
shows that the employment of such methods by the Germans
was not the result of a desperate decision, but had been
prepared for deliberately.