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DEBUNKING Poison Gas War Scares

Europe is preparing for war. Her people are being drilled to use gas masks and to fight poison gas air raids. Will deadly gas wipe out American cities, destroy U. S. armies? Here are an expert’s views on this “bogey man” of war.

by CAPTAIN GEORGE J. B. FISHER,

Chemical Warfare Service, U. S. Army, as told to James Nevin Miller ENORMOUS cities blanketed with death-dealing gas fumes. Citizens rushing about in panic as enemy planes roar overhead. Thousands of lives snuffed out in a few minutes. Countless humans coughing and screaming with fear, fighting among themselves to reach subterranean gas-proof cellars.

This is the terrifying picture so frequently painted by fiction writers, the movies, and the sensational press about the horrors of poison gas in the next war.

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RUSSIAN FIRE CHIEF IS STRIKING FIGURE

What a Russian Soviet fire chief looks like when he goes into action is revealed in this unusual photograph. It was snapped in a railroad yard by a photographer who arrived on the scene just as the chief was signaling his men to bring up their apparatus.

Ready for any emergency is this striking figure, as his costume indicates. An auto horn at his side and signal flgs aid him to give orders to the brigade he commands. This is necessary because vocal instructions are out of the question for him. A gas mask covers his entire face to shield him from smoke and noxious fumes. His helmet carries a spike to ward off or break up falling fragments of masonry and glass that would cause injury if they landed solidly.

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THE TRUTH ABOUT Poison Gas

By ALDEN P. ARMAGNAC

FRANCE sells gas masks to its citizens on a five-year installment plan. Germany reveals that it has secretly been manufacturing a new type of gas mask for noncombatants, by the million. Startled Britons learn that the world’s first factory for civilian masks, at Blackburn, England, has passed its 9,000,000 mark and is turning out 100,000 a day to reach its quota of a gas mask for every man, woman, and child in the British Isles.

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‘Chute Jumpers in Gas Masks March on Skis
Resembling creatures from some strange world, a group of parachute instructors in gas masks recently dropped one after another from a Soviet plane, then marched 200 miles on skis. The skis were dropped from the plane after the twelve men had landed safely. Thirty hours were required for the long march to Moscow. The demonstration was staged by the instructors as one of the lessons in parachute jumping that the Soviet Republic is offering in training civilians.

Newest Type Of Army Gas Mask

THIS mask is the army’s latest type. Among its features are optically ground, neutral eye pieces that permit its wearer to use delicate precision instruments, and its ability to permit conversation, a practice that is impossible with older type masks. The purification cannister is worn on the shoulders, permitting additional freedom of movement.

Hoodlike Gas Mask Protects Babies

Three years of research have solved the grim problem of fitting babies with gas masks, according to the British designer of the model illustrated in use below. Rubberized gasproof fabric completely incloses an infant from the waist up in a capacious hood with a large cellulose acetate window. A hand bellows operated by the parent supplies pure filtered air for the baby to breathe.

Full-Vision Gas Mask
THE young lady below is demonstrating one of the newest types of gas masks, now being produced in the United States. It allows the wearer full vision..

MASKED CYCLIST SOUNDS GAS-ATTACK WARNING

Sounding a loud alarm through a loudspeaker clamped to the handlebars of his bicycle, a masked rider wheeled through London streets recently, like a modern Paul Revere, to test the efficiency of a new method of warning the public against sudden aerial gas attacks in war time. Equipped with gas mask and respirator, the cyclist broadcast warnings through a microphone built into the mask and wired to the battery-operated loudspeaker.

Sucks to be the other baby in the open crib.

Glass Case Protects Baby from Poison Gas
Masked nurses clad in gasproof rubber garments are testing out the latest invention of war-fearing Europe. It is a portable glass case in which babies can be thrust at the alarm of a gas attack and carried to a zone of safety.

This doesn’t sound like a very safe idea…

MASKS TESTED WITH REAL POISON GAS

Tempting death daily is the lot of a few daring men in a London laboratory, where a steel-walled chamber containing an appreciable quantity of real poison gas is reported in use to test the air-purifying canisters of military gas masks. Masked experimenters sit outside the deadly chamber, and breathe through hoses that terminate in the canisters within. A white-coated physician stands near to render first aid, in case the poison-absorbing chemicals should fail to function. Only in this way can new types of equipment be tested.

Invading Sailors in Gas Masks Carry Radio Transmitter
Playing at “war” on the English coast, a landing party of sailors representing the invading enemy donned gas masks and went ashore at Studland Beach near Swanage, to be met by a small defending party of British soldiers. The sailors carried a portable radio transmitter with a self-contained receiver to maintain communications with their supporting navy.

Zipper Gas Mask Made for Babies
A SPECIAL handbag for carrying babies furnishes protection in case of a wartime gas attack. An oxygen tank begins to function as soon as the zipper cover is closed, supplying air to the baby.