Gas and the Government:

Chemical Research and Military Reorganization of Science during WWI the_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

Amos Fries, Chemical Warfare (New York: McGraw Hill Book Company, 1921), 1 Robert B. Edgerton, Death or Glory: The Legacy of the Crimean War (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999), 249. 3 F. 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

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
4

Brophy, 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.

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

7 8

Brophy, 1:6. The 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 America s 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.

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.

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

U.S. Bureau of Education, The War Work of American Colleges and Universities during the War, U.S. Bureau of Education, Higher Education Circular No. 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 Chemistry 10 (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
19 20

Burrell, 96. Fries, 49.

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

21 22

Fries, 33. Benedict Crowell, America s Munitions: 1917-1918 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1919), 398. 23 Brophy, 2:15. 24 Crowell, 396. 25 Brophy, 1:12. 26 Brophy, 2:18

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

Fries, 152. Clarence J. West, The History of Mustard Gas, Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering 22 (1920), 541. 29 Vesicatory gases are those that cause blistering upon skin contact. The most notorious example is mustard gas.
28

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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

Fries, 40-42. William L. Sibert, Annual Reports Chief of Chemical Warfare Service (Washington D.C.: GPO, 1919), 187. 32 Crowell, 395-407.
31

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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

33

W.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 America s World War I Chemical Weapon, MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History Vol. 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.

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 Chemistry noted with some pride the exemplary

38

Fries, 16.

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.

Charles 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

43 44

Brophy, 1:16. Frederic J. Brown, Chemical Warfare: A Study in Restraints (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), 10. 45 Brophy, 2:28. 46 Brophy, 1:16. 47 Brown, 53.

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 Chemistry published 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
Brown, 57. The Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry 11 (1919), 810-820.. 50 Brown, 58. 51 Chemical Warfare Service Endangered, The Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry 12 (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 Chemistry under 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
Harry 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
54

Harry L. Gilchrist, Chlorine gas Its Uses a Hundred Years Ago. Wisconsin Medical Journal 23 (1924) 235-238. H.W. Walker and J. E. Mills, Chemical Warfare Service Boll Weevil Investigation Progress Report , Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry 19 (1927), 710-711. 56 Amos Fries, By-products of chemical warfare , Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry 20 (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 place where people are not equipped with gas masks, there is no substance or no half dozen substances that can rout them so easily as gas. You can kill them if you want 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 of business 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 have begun to take that up in regard to routing desperadoes who get into houses. All that 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
Amos Fries, Letter to Editor of the Washington Post , July 6, 1925. U.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.
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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
William A. McGarry, Philadelphia s tear bombs and mobs , Scientific American 125 (1921), 197, 209-211. New York Times, Sept. 17, 1923, p. 1. 61 Chemical Warfare Service, Provisional Instructions for the Control of Mobs by Chemical Warfare, (Washington, D.C., 1922).
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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.

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