Slow Asphyxiation
Many a stout-hearted man can “bite upon the bullet” and bear pain up to the varying but inevitable limit when unconsciousness puts an end to literally unbearable agony. But is there anyone who could face with any show of courage the unutterable terror of slow asphyxiation? This is indeed a horrible picture. Raemaekers has helped us to realise the unrealisable, setting down with his swift and merciless pencil the oft-repeated incident of the despair, even to tears, of surgeons and nurses who, God knows, might well have thought they had little to learn about human suffering.
The German will blush for this devilry till the last day of history. One other deed of his was near as bad—the attempt to fasten on the French the guilt of this infamous departure from the laws of chivalry in war. One other deed was worse—that of the Prussian officer prisoner who, as reported by our “Eye-witness,” saw some of our men writhing on the ground in the throes of this agony and—laughed.
This bad business of the poison-gas was a damnable crime and a short-sighted. It tempered the fighting resolution of our men. Ask in particular any Canadian since Ypres, and certainly after and because of that day many a German in the field has received a bayonet wound instead of quarter and a kindly cigarette. It is for Germans after repentance to ask themselves whether after all such initiative has really any military value—except to the other side.
JOSEPH THORP
SLOW ASPHYXIATION