A Matter of Fashion Changing

The polarisation which has characterised the debate over chemical warfare and chemical disarmament ever since, and which remains much the same in the late twentieth century, became evident immediately after the First World War. The implications of the development of chemical warfare in 1915-18 did not escape the political or military planners. In particular, the potential for the aerial delivery of gas now opened up the possibility that chemical agents could be used on a massive scale against civilian, as well as military, targets. It was this fear which was to dominate thinking in Britain, Germany and the United States during the inter-war years and during the Second World War. 

Instead, the Allies unanimously agreed that the Treaty of Versailles should ban the production or importation of toxic chemical warfare agent by Germany, and Article 171 stated, 

The use of asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases and all analogous liquids, materials or devices being prohibited, their manufacture and importation are strictly forbidden in Germany. 

Britain also proposed that Germany should transfer all chemical processes which had been used for producing munitions to the Allies. The Americans suspected that the British were motivated by economic rather than military considerations, and viewed their proposal as unenforceable. A new British resolution was tabled but met with the same objections. A compromise was finally accepted as Article 172 which required the German government to disclose the nature and mode of manufacture of, inter alia, all chemical preparations made by them .  

Even at this early stage, several strands to the debate were becoming apparent - the moral urge to renounce a particularly horrific form of warfare, the military concern to ensure that the ability to defend against gas and to retaliate in kind were retained, and the economic and industrial considerations. 

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It is absurd to consider morality on this topic when everbody used it in the last war without a word of complaint from the moralists or the Church. On the other hand, in the l st war the ootnbing of open cities was regarded as forbidden. Mow everybody does it as a matter of course. It is simply a question of fashion changing as she does between long and short skirts for women. 

By changing the state of matter of liquid water and drying hair with a hair dryer, hydrogen bonds are put back in hair. Most bonds that are formed will be naturally present in the keratin coils of hair, but new hydrogen bonds can form as well. When hair is curled with a hair dryer or a curling iron, new hydrogen bonds are created that coil the hair in new ways. Who knew science could be so fashionable 12... 

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