Page our

PEOPLES

ADVOCATE

August 18, i937

Guernica’s Horror Foresha

ITH Germany and Italy

conducting a war of ag-
gression against the Spanish
people, with Japanese impert-
alism stretching forth a mailed
hand in a well-timed effort to
grasp North China as wt
grasped. Manchuria, and with
the memory of Italy s ~con-
quest’ of Hthiopia still fresh,
peace-loving people every-
where are realizing the truth of
the statement that Fascism and
War are synonymous.

Whale the rest of the world
is engaged in a suicidal arma-
ments race, the Soviet Union
alone stands unequivocally for
peace, her army for defensive
purposes only against those
Fascist and imperialist powers
who envy her growing pros-
perity.

Only action of the people,
particularly of the great de-
mocracies, can avert this head-
long plunge toward the abyss.
If the world’s democratic pow-
ers will utilize the machinery
of the League of Natrovs
against the Fascist aggressors,
if the people of those democra-
cies will make themselves
heard and force their govern-
ments to take action, then war
may be averted. And with the
defeat of Fascism in Spain, so
everywhere Pascism will be
forced to retreat. :

Here, in these articles, noted
contributors to Health and Hy-
giene, US monthly, whose
fearless attitude toward cur-
rend problems has made it oul=
standing in its field, discuss
two aspects of war.

Victor Brinton, chemist and
writer, reveals some of the
horrors science has devised im.
its laboratories to aid in the de-
struction of ciwilization. Chas.
E. Collahan’s analysis of the
last war serves to emphasize
fhe insanity of warfare.

By VICTOR BRINTON

Deo eae efforts are
being made today by so-
called responsible military
authorities to minimize the
dangers of chemical wartare.
Through every available
publicity medium they are
eeeking to create the illusion
that the effectiveness of the use
of poison gas in warfare has been
greatly over-estimated.
figures are
sented in an attempt to show
that. while known eases may
cause? civilian populations some
inconvenience, the actual dan-
gers have been grossly exag-
gerated.

But, while military authorities
carry on this campaign to dis-
count the effectiveness of chem-
jcal warfare, 2 real hint of what
is going on behind the scenes is
gained froni the frank admission
made recently by Major-General
Edward Croft to the American
Association of Military Surgeons-

Analyzing certain results of
US Second Army manoeuvres
before these hard-boiled realists,
Dr. Croft foresaw 2 war in which
iwo types of casualties would
occur, namely mustard cases and
out-and-out burns-

“Jt should not be an uncome=
mon occurrence,” he said, “to
find mustard casualties soaring
to the one hundred per cent
mark in the smaller units. .- - =
In addition to these -- - it seems
to me that we must expect and
prepare for another type of burn.

“Today there 1s more than one
jndication that  thermit, the
white phosphorus (incendiary
agents), will be dumped on rear
area installations ijn appalling
quantities. -. - In any event at
hope you will be ready for them.”

Jnipressive pre-

OME idea of the immense

range and complexity of the
material already published on the
subject of chemical warfare may
be obtained from the faet that
jn a recent 700-page treatise de-
voted exclusively to the question
there is a partial bibliography
listing more than 600 separate
and distinct references In several
languages.

Clearly, therefore, in an article
such as this only a very few of
the highlights can be touched

upon, And, because of public con-
fusion regarding the alleged
‘humaneness’ of chemical agents
under actual battle conditions, I
shall exiract—from officially pub-
lished statistics—a handful of
damaging facts.

My source of information is the
treatise I have already referred
to—Chemicals in War, by Lieut.
Col. Augustin M-. Prentiss, of the
Chemical Warfare Service, United
States Army. This book can be
said to embody more recent find-
ings in that it was only published
this year.

More than 68,000,000 men were
mobilized during the first World
War (1914-1915) by all the com-
batant powers (sixteen in number).
Of this huge total more than half
(54.7 per cent) became ‘casualties’
from all battle causes. includins
an estimated 7.000,000 deaths.

What part did chemicals play in
this holocaust? The ‘official’ view
js that gas casualties during the
war were only 4.6 per cent of all
battle injuries and only 1.32 per
cent of all battle deaths. So far
jt looks like a good case for the
chemical enthusiasts. But wait.

The real effectiveness of a com-

bat arm depends, not simply
produces, but on a
technical and military factors:
itself (efficiency of the
perience and background,
nomic and production
involved); and the ratio to
combat personnel of
trained for the special
under consideration.

T once, the figures take on a

mew and far more deadly

character. The five most important
combat arms used in the last war
following percent-

contributed the
age
ized:

1, Infantry

of the total arms force mobil-

(Gineluding machine-

gun and tank units) 3096
2 Artillery ineluding heavy
trench mortar units - 22096
3. Combat engineers (including
ehemical units) -....-.--- 8%

4. Air corps (including observa-

tion balloon units) ------ 6%
5. Cavalry (including mechanized
TkeleS) she aso coo soos 1%
6. Miscellaneous services and ad-
ministration ....-.-.----- 10%

Wote first of all the extremely
slight contribution of groups 3,
4 and 5, which were precisely
those arms which were the least
fully developed in the jast war
and which have been the most in-
{fensively developed since. Then
observe that, under 3, the chemical
arm Played only a minor role in
the engineering Services.

In the light of these figures the

Over

By FAY GOLDIE,
Well-known Australian Journalist
in Soviet Russia Today.

ARRIVED early one even-

ing at Ordjonikidze, laden
with lilac, lilies of the valley,
periwinkles, hard boiled
eggs, bunches of fat yadish-
es, andsome garlic sausage,
all of which gifts had been
pressed on me by fellow trav-
ellers at various points of my
journey from Rostov - on -
Don.

The streets of
swarmed with
swashbuckling: Gossacks, their
chests decorated with impressive
rows of cartridges, and their beits
hung with an array of eutlasses,
daggers and penknives lent color
and swagger ta the scene. A water
Seller slouched down a cobbled
street drumming a steady, letbar-
gic tatoo on his donkey's lean
flanks. Women were busy buying
provisions at the market on the
fringe of the town. They inter-
ested me particularly with their
proud, swinging walk, and calm
eyes.

I dined with a Caveasian woman
doctor, who was doing important
social work among the peasant
women in the Caucasus. She was
the daughter of an illiterate shep-
herd, and at fourteen had heen
jidnapped by a band of wild moun-

Qrdjonikidze
people. Great,

on
fhe actual number of casualties it
complexity of
the
degree of development in the arm
weapons
and agents employed, tactical ex-
eco-
problems
total
those forces
service

situation may best be summed up
in Lieut. Col. Prentiss’ own words:

“The 23,765 engineers employed
as ; (chemical) troops during
the war (by all combatants) con-
stituted approximately 2 per cent

of the total combat engineers, so
we may say that 2 per cent or the
combat effort was devoted to
ehemical warfare, and that gas
warfare by engineer (chemical)
troops constituted 2 per cent ot
$ per cent, or 0-16 per cent of the
total combat effort of the armies.

“Adding the artillery effort (1.13
per cent) and engineer (16 per
cent) together, we find that 1.29
per cent of the total combat effort
of the armies was expended in
gas-warfare operations from which
were produced 4.6 per cent of the
total battle injuries and 5.7 per
cent of all the non-fatal battle in-
juries.

“We may, therefore, say that on
the basis of the ratio of casualties
to military effort, gas was from
four to five times more effective
than the average of the military
agents used in the war.”

This conclusion, vouched for by
official figures Qvbich are usually
conservative), and put into the
record by an officer of the Ameri-
can Chemical Warfare Service,
dispels any illusion that the next
war is going to be more or less
of a chemical picnic, equally
divided between tears, gagging,
vomiting, blistering and first, sec-
ond and third degree laughs.

And remember, these results
which look so insignificant when
placed uneritically im a mass of

tain tribesmen. After enduring
two years of indescribable whard-
ships she had eventually escaped
and made her way back to her
native village.

She had married, and each of
her three babies had died soon
after birth through ignorance on
her part, and lack of any medical
attention.

Then the revolution had come.
She had been given an opportunity
to study. and had finally qualified
as a doctor. Today she is a charm-
ing, cultured woman, devoting her
life to raising the eultural and
physical standard of her country-
women.

“Wad you seen our women in
pre-revolutionary days, you would
realize what a miracle had been
performed here,” she said. We
were standing on a little balcony
overhanging the street. It was 2
dark, quiet night, with only a
ghost of a moon riding the sky-
The voices of people in the street
below made music composed of
many Strange rich dialects. “You
see how they walk now, these
women, with such confidence,
Jookinge men straight in the eye as
equals. Before they eringed like
whipped dogs; men were their mas-
ters, and they had no rights of
their own.”

They were busy pulling down the
old shacks and building up-to-date
cottages and flats in Ordjonikidzez,
as they were doing everywhere else
that I visited in the Soviet Union.

statistics, were obtained principal-
ly during the latter part of the
war by barely more than 100
necessarily inexperienced chemical
units operating with deadly chem-
jeals still in the experimental stage
of development -
*
S further proof, there are fig-
ures on the casualty-producme

efficiency of various types of
weapons.

Approximately five billion
pounds of high explosives were

used in the World War. With this
colossal rain of steel and nitrates
the belligerents ran up 10,000,000
easualties (including deaths), which
is at the extremely costly rate of
500 pounds of high explosives for
every man put out of action.

Tf rifle and machine gun fire is
taken into consideration, an equal
number of casualties required fifty
billion rounds of ammunition, or
one casualty for every 5,000
rounds.

Contrast with these figures the
9,000,000 chemical shells dis-
charged, with casualties number-
ing 400,000, or one casualty for
every 2214 shells used. And these
were mustard gas Shells alone,
consuming in all 1,200 tons of the
transparent oily amber liquid
which is still known as ‘the king
of poison gases.’

For every 60 pounds dispersed
in battle a soldier went out of
action. If we include all the other
types of gases, with 2 grand total
of 125,000 tons used on all fronts,
the rate is still at the remarkably

Also, they had their Magnificent
park of culture and rest where
there is boating on a lake, a bil-
liard room, reading room, cinema,
al freseo dance floor, and a stage
for symphony concerts and the-
atricals.

My friend and lL wandered
through the park very late that
night, and watched the Cossacks
dancing their wild, intoxicating
dances, and lovers strolling arm in
arm, and we listened to a Very
eood orchestra: playing music from
one of the new Russian operas.

Hik=} next morning I left by bus

for Tiflis, over the Georgian
Military Highway. Being a for-
eigner, and therefore 2 privileged
person, I sat up in front with the
driver.

So far I had not seen 4 single
mountain on my journey down
South, and I anticipated a long and
tiresome drive before we would
reach really mountainous country.
We had not been on the road more
than fifteen minutes when sudden-
ly great mist-draped mountains
took shape before us, rising ab-
ruptly from the vast, flat hand of
the country, to me lost in the
clouds. Forests clothed them, and
the swift, ‘crystal “ Terek River
wound about their feet.

As the sun grew stronger the
mist lifted, and the snow-covered
peaks of the mountains glittered
like diamonds. Blossoming cherry
orchards flanked the river in its

low level of one casualty for every
192 pounds of chemicals.

*

ELL, you may say, but we now

have fas masks, shelters and
other protective devices. his is
about as comforting as the knowl-
edge that you have a life-preserver
aboard a ship sinking on the high
seas.

The whole quesfion of gas de-
fense is submerged in a fog of
mystery, fear, ignorance and mis-
representation. In regard to masks,
there is plenty of information
available on what to do in case
ef an attack by certain recog-
nized —and recognizable — gases,
such as chlorine, phosgene, tear
gases and smokes.

The trouble is that the gases
most likely to be used in severely
contested civilian areas, as well
as in defensive positions at the
front, are of the skin-blistering

or vesicant type, such as mustard -

gas and the still untested but ex-
tremely potent American inven-
tion, Lewisite. And against these
types the mask alone is utterly
useless; it must be supplemented
by special rubberized clothing
thoroughly insulated against outer
air, and such clothing, of course,
means extreme discomfort.
Furthermore, each mask must
be supplied with its canister of
filtering material, with as many
refills as may be needed during a
raid. To see that these canisters
are not only reasonably fresh but
that they contain the right kind
of filter for attacks that are

The Georgian Military Hig

erratic course, and now and then
we would climb past gay little vil-
lages of brightly colored cottages,
set in the midst of orchards. Chil-
dren were setting out for school,
their books under their arms,
where only a few years before the
people had been practically one
hundred per cent illiterates, and
the chances of even the cleverest
and richest peasant children
achieving any education had been
remote in the extreme.

Poets and writers, and painters
by the score have tried to depict
the beauty of the Georgian Mili-
tary Highway with its mountains
like rigid flames, but all that one
may have seen and Tread becomes
pale and trite before the zrandeur
ef the reality.

The road trails like a ribbon
over the shoulders of the moun-
tains, now rising above the clouds,
now sweeping down to the green
foothills. Begun in 1802, it was
completed in 1814, built by the
army with the forced labor of the
mountaineers. Tremendous tech-
nical difficulties had to be over-
come, and five years were spent
conquering the Daryal Gorge
alone. It is actually the shortest
route between central Soviet Rus-
sia, and the Trans-Caucasion Re-
publics, and the journey takes
from eight o'clock in the morning:
until seven in the evening to com-
plete, starting from the Caucasian
town of Ordjonikidze, and ending
at Tiflis, the capital of Georgia.

bound to be full of surprises, will
be a difficult job for the author

ities.
*

AD what of those appalling
quantities of thermit and other
incendiary bombs, the effects of
which the recent Fascist bombing
of Guernica has given us such a
vivid idea. -
The substances in these bombs
will eat their way through steel.
Water is useless against them.
Furthermore—and this is true of

virtually all important military
chemical agents—they can be
manufactured in mass quantities

from readily available raw mate-
tials at a moderate cost.

Britain has developed a 6%4-
ounce ‘baby incendiary’ bomb of
which as many as 16,000 can be
carried in an airplane at one time
_a veritable sheet of intense flame
hurled from the sky upon, let us
Say, tenement districts erowded
with workers and their families.

Even as I write this from St.
Dunstan’s Home for Blinded Sol-
diers in London, England, comes
the ominous news that during the
past three or four years some 25
or more cases of permanent blind-
ness have been admitted. But not
ordinary blindness; in each case
it was determined that loss of
vision was a ‘delayed-action’ con-
sequence of exposure to mustard
gas twenty years ar ~ Fourteen of
these victims of gas warfare en-
tered the home last year alone
4nd other victims are still com-
ing in.

way

Frequently we passed herds of
horses and mules, and as we crept
up into the mountains great flocks
of sheep would block our way,
driven by picturesque tribesmen in
flowing skin capes. :

We passed beyond the forest
belt. Streams, fed by glaciers,
rushed down the sides of the moun-
tains to swell the Terek River that
thundered far down in the valley
below.

The scenery became increasing—
ly wild and grand. Crumbling age-
old fortresses, monasteries, and
castles built in the most inacces-
sible places, told their own version
of the history of the mountain
people.

Qne grey stone castle in par-
ticular claimed our interest, cling-
ing like a deserted hornet’s nest to
the very lip of a sheer, towering
precipice many thousands of feet
high. It was the castle of the an-
cient Georgian Cleopatra, Queen
Tamara, who, our driver related
with simple faith, took a life for
each night of love and at dawn
would have her luckless lovers
flune from the castle window intoi
the abyss below.

Mount Kazbek made a sudden,
dramatic appearance, towering
16,546 feet high and covered with
snow. “he sun played on her like
a torch on a diamond, so that she
hurt one's eyes with her dazzling
beauty.

(Concluded next week.)

| LITTLE TOWNS - - « by Harold Griffin

Villanueva de la Canada,

Guadalajara and Brunete ..- - -
these might have been mere names upon a map

hanging on an office wall

giving latitude and longitude ; beyond that

nothing. nothing at all.

but would you expect

anyone glancing over the vast expanse of

Canada
to remember long

such names as Abbotsford or Lillooet?

and yet
there is a strange affinity

between Lillooet upon the Fraser,
its highway poised on sun-baked hills

and dusty im the summer ;

between the town that drowses in the valley
amid the ordered efforts of its tout

and the rocky, stecl-torn halls about Brunete.

for from such little towns as these.

whose streets are quict

and far removed from conflict,

to Inttle towns

whose names the cables flung up
to hold the key to hastory

and. tell new tales of vator,
came lads who not so long ago

looked out upon the pines atop

Woman’s Diary —

AY HES & days

Breaking
the tax: = we never
- know exactly

what laws are in existence
until we happen to break one
of them. I received a parcel
of books the other day and
so came into the bad graces
of the customs officials. One

of the books was called “Mod-

ern Marriage and Birth Control,”

and the gentleman was very dubi-
ous about letting me get away with
it. However,
bore away my book triumphantly.

he relented and I

It seems that they are not sup-

posed to allow through any books

on contraception, and, if such

pooks do get through, by some
carelessness,
eated.

they can be confis-
Tf the owner refuses to

from obscurity

the jagged

sive them up, then a heavy fine is
the penalty.

In this way, necessary know-
ledge is kept from families in dire
need of it. The country is rapidly
waking up to the fact that birth
control is something essential for
the good of the public and continu-
ation of 2 healthy race, and so in
the course of time this law will be
repealed if we women do our best
to have this matter brought before
the proper authorities. The peopie
need this information and we in-
tend to get it for them. All or-
sanizations should take up this
important question and agitate
for a proper education of women.

HERE is another

Obsolete very old English
Statutes. law ready for the
scrap-heap. It was

From New Masses

brought to light recently at Ham_
ilton, Ont., where a judge stated
it was lawful for a man to chas-
tise or confine his wife to enforce
certain rights. This statement,
made ine 1937 and in 2 so-called
free country, seems absolutely in-
congruous, but S0es to show to
what length the law will £0, in
spite of the general opinion in
that district that such 2 law was
obsolete, as indeed are many of

our laws. And, for that matter,
our whole sacial and economic
system.

Wot everyone knows that the
conscription law of war-time has
never been repealed, and at any
time can be enforced. This is
especially serious in view of the
present grave international crises,
and is an issue which should be
taken up and investigated im-

the wind

side by side

far away,

mountain ridge ;
smelling of wood-smoke wm the halls.

here they died,
the acrid stench of powder in their nostrils,

with men who came from little towns of Italy

and Germany and France 5

from ancient villages

in Austria and Wales,

while shrapnel, shot and shell

reduced the little towns of Spain

io flame-wrecked hell.

here they flung the Fascists back

to keep a vow

they would not pass ;

that the wind that rambles through the canyons
of the Fraser

might never bring

the drone of bombing planes

or smell of death upon the wing.

they did not know,

the whale they planned the strike
to gain a raise of fifty cents a aay
and barred the mine to scabs,
that it would be this way,

standing astride the dawn
to bar the highway to Madrid.

mediately
every kind.

by organizations of

x

Feuchtwanger’s ]
New Novel.
‘“*Moscow

1937,’ by Leon Feuchtwanger,
which tells of the present condi-
fions in Russia, and obviously
much against the authors will,
shows the contrast in the content-
ed state of mind of the Russian
people with their economic plan-
ning as against the pitter voices
of the people raised against the
Fascist state in Germany and
Italy, which neither fear of con-
centration camps nor threat of
death will hush.

HAVE
just fin-
ished reading

In the first few pages the author
tells of his reluctance to write the

by Victoria Post

pook—it would be so easy to tell
of things in Russia that were bad,
but he had nothing but praise for
what he had seen, and he would
have a hard time making his
friends believe this. However, in
fairness to everybody, he found
that he couldn’t withhold what he
had to tell, hence the book.

Many of the facts therein will
be corroborated, no doubt, by Mrs.
Elizabeth Kerr, who has just re-
turned from two months’ tour of
Russia as a guest of the Friends
of the Soviet Union, during which
tour she represented the women
of British Columbia. Mrs. Kerr
will be speaking at various pub
lic meetings and most of you will
have an opportunity to obtain first
hand information, particularly on
the position of women in the
USSR.

dows The Next War

HEN we who hate war

attempt to picture it at
its worst it is always a vision
of savage battle. murderous
bombardment, mangled
bodies .. . a mad hell of men
pushing themselves forward
to destruction.

It may be a little shocking to
state bluntly that this picture rep-
resents a relatively minor portion
of war's horrors. This is but the
immediate aspect of war, the as-
pect which has permitted us so
foolishly to associate heroism. and
courage with such insane he-
haviour.

The war zones of Hurope during
the first World War spewed out
more than ten millions of refu-
zees who lived from hand to mouth
during the long years of the war
and finally returned to ‘homes®
now cut through by deserted
trenches and pock-marked by shell
holes. :

At the same time hundreds of
thousands of men were released ~
from indescribable military prisons
and left to wander their way across
the continent seeking their homes
and carrying with them the dis-
eases they had contracted.

Let us not believe that we must
await the prophesied bacteria war-
fare of the future before death
from disease will be wars great
toll. Pestilence, although the very
word suggests the middle ages, is
the greatest killer in all wars.

*

A eS who consider pestilence
; peculiar to the middle ages
need only recall the devastating
pandemic of influence which Swept
the world in 1918, killing 20,000,000
people. The casualty lists of the
armies of the world reported only
13.000,000 dead. The thousands who
died of influenza in Montreal, in
San Francisco and in Calcutta,
however, were as much victims of
the war as were the gassed and
shattered men on the Western
Front.

But in June, 1916, long before
influenza ravished Europe, a Sur
vey of 2,400,000 German soldiers
in hospitals disclosed that 750,000
were suffering from pulmonary
tuberculosis, 600,000 from heart

and nervous diseases and 500,000 —

from intestinal diseases, especially
dysentery-~

During the first year of the war
76,000 French soldiers were invalid-
ed home because of tuberculosis.
And these men only a short while
azo had been chosen on standards
of physical perfection because, in
our modern wars, we want only
perfect specimens for destruction.

Other diseases that left signifi-
cant death records in the armies,
the epidemic characters of which
were directly traceable to war con-
ditions, were trench fever, cerebro-
spinal fever, the after-effects of
fas warfare and so-called ‘shell
shock.’

The chaotic disorganization pre-
yailing throughout the continent
resulted in an almost complete
lack of vital statistics, and there-
fore the extent of the horrors of
pestilence can only be indicated.

The influenza epidemic was the
war's greatest single scourge, but
its origin and full toll are still in
doubt. Other diseases in epidemic
and pandemic proportions, aided
by famine and starvation, affected
not only the ten million refugees
and forty-two million peoples in
occupied territories, but the entire
populations of Europe and parts of
Asia, Africa and the two Americas.

Typhoid was extensive in Ttaly,
the Balkans, Russia and many
other countries. The population of
Macedonia fell from 175,000 in
1314 to 42,500 in 1919. The ‘suc-
cessful’ Allied blockade was _ fre:
sponsible for about one miullion
deaths in Germany from malnutri-
tion, tuberculosis and intestinal
disorders, over and above the nor-

mal death rate.

In Germany tuberculosis in-
creased 50 per cent in children
under five years of age and 15

per cent in children between five
and fifteen years of age. In Serbia,
in the vear 1917, 145.3 people out
of every thousand died of this
‘white death.’

WW considering these and other
jaree increases in the preval-
ence and malignancy of disease it
must also be realized that, just
previous to the war, medical
seience was making its first con-
sideration gains in the prevention
of disease and the postponement of
death a new chapter was bezin-
ning to be written in pathology.
All of these gains were wiped out.
Consider the far-reaching effects
on race devitalization and retarda-
tion. The 13,000,000 soldiers slain
had been the world’s most physical:
ly perfect Specimens. The six and
one-quarter million maimed fight-
ing= men had been the most
physically perfect, as had aiso
been the 14,000,000 men who re:
turned home ‘otherwise wounded.
Those who remained to carry on
were the ones who were discarded
Hecause of physical or mental dis-
ease, deformity, lack of stature and
other shorteomings. Consider the
effects of mass murder, pestilence,
and famine upon what remained
of the races at the end of the wal,
and upon the new races they were
expected to produce. How many
of us carry unseen scars of the
first World War.

Lastiy, realize that the decrease in
births for Germany alone amount
ed to two million, Estimates of the
number of years required to fre
furn the male populations of the
belligerent nations to 4 quantita=
tive normal are: Great Britain, 10
years; Germany, 12 years; Italy,
38 years; France, 66 years.

These estimates make no predic
tions as to the quality of the re-
stored populations, nor do they
dare to predict that the war
makers are awaiting revitalized
peoples before beginning thei
more complete destruction of the
second World War.

one
a

aed

abate