Several times did the Lord Paramount return to the topic of poison gas with Gerson. He did not want it to be used, but at the same time the logic of war made him anxious to be sure of an effective supply. Camelford’s threat of holding it up haunted him with a very tiresome persistence. And Gerson had been a poison gas expert.

The Lord Paramount wanted war to be magnificent. Wars are the red letters that illuminate the page of history. The resolute tramp of infantry, the inspiring jingle and clatter of cavalry, the mounting thunder of the guns: that was the music to which history had gone since history was worthy of being called history, and he wished that the old tunes could still be played and history still march to them. Some of these new machines and new methods, he perceived had the hardness and intolerance of a scientific thesis; they despiritualized warfare; they made it indiscriminate; almost they abolished heroism in favour of ingenuity and persistence, these scientific virtues. At the climax men would be just carried forward willy-nilly. He would gladly have subscribed to any common understanding to eliminate the aeroplane, the submarine, and all gas from civilized hostilities, as bacteria and explosive bullets have already been eliminated. But Gerson would have none of these exclusions. “War is war,” said he, “and what kills and breaks the spirit best is what you have to use.”

“But the bombing of towns! Poison gas on civilians. Poison gas almost haphazard.”

“What right have they to be civilians?” said Gerson.

“Probably shirking a levy or something. In the next war there won’t be any civilians. Gas doesn’t have a fair deal. Everyone’s against it. Ask me, I should say it improves fighting. Robs them of the idea there’s something safe behind them. How’s the old nigger song go? Bombs —

?“‘Kicking up ahind and afore
???And a yaller gas aspreading out ahind old Joe’—

Turns ’em back to it.”

“Practically — at Geneva we have undertaken not to use gas.”

“Query — the ‘practically.’ ‘Fit comes to that, we’ve renounced the use of war — by the Kellogg Pact and suchlike flummery. Doesn’t prevent every Power in Europe, and Washington too, keeping its Poison Gas Department up to strength and working overtime. No — sir. For propaganda purposes you may begin a war gentlemanly and elegant, but wait till the game warms up! Then you gouge. Then you bite off noses. And the gas comes in-trust me.

“Yes,” said the Lord Paramount, yielding. “Yes. It’s true. To impose a decision one must be stern.”

He composed himself for some moments as an image of implacable sternness.

The expression in the eye of General Gerson was no doubt reluctant respect.

“And now for the most probable campaigns,” began the Lord Paramount, and stirred the maps that lay upon the table before them. “First — Russia.”

“Things might very well begin there,” said Gerson.

For a time they discussed the possibilities arising out of a clash with Moscow. “In that event,” said Gerson, “if nothing occurs in nearer Europe, we would have to run a sort of second-rate war. As we did in Palestine with Allenby. For a time, anyhow. The new things are for closer populations. We can’t send a lot of ultramodern stuff out there. Aeroplanes with machine guns — in sufficient abundance, of course — ought to settle anything that we’re likely to have against us in India or central Asia. Central Asia has always fallen back on nomadism hitherto, cavalry swarms, Parthians, Huns, Mongols, and so on. But that game’s up, against aeroplanes and machine guns. The wing will beat the horse. New chapter of history. And the Afghan game of sitting among rocks and sniping at you goes the same way. The bird comes down on him. Every sort of what I might call barbaric and savage warfare is over now — twenty years out of date. We’ve got ’em. Russia in Asia would be a comparatively easy war. But we can’t count on restricting it to Asia.”

“I hope to do so.”

“Hope, yes — I said, ‘count on it.’ And besides, there’s Petersburg — what they WILL call Leningrad — and a little raid from that as a base to Moscow, just to settle things. We may be forced to do that. We might fight in central Asia for ten years and settle nothing. . . . And who knows? If things get difficult with us — our friends in Berlin . . . Or even nearer . . . You never know.”

He scrutinized the Lord Paramount.

“It isn’t safe,” he said, making it plainer, “to lean over Europe and fight Russia.”

“I do not think it will be like that,” said the Lord Paramount.

“No. But it might be.”

Gerson left that doubt to rankle.

“I don’t care what agreements you make,” he said, “not to use this or that. States that can keep such agreements aren’t really at war at all. It’s just sport, s’long as you have rules. War don’t begin until law ends. It isn’t necessary if any sort of agreement can be made and enforced. All this agreeing not to use gas.” Gerson smiled and showed his black teeth and pointed his witticism — “well, it’s gas and nothing else. The decisive factor in any first-class war now has to be gas delivered from the air. Work it out — it’s as plain as daylight. It’s the only way to decision. All modern war from now on will be a fight to be able to drop gas in quantity on the most crowded, sensitive, nervous centre of the enemy. Then and then only will the other side give in. They HAVE to give in. You go on gassing till they do. . . . What other idea of war CAN there be now?”

It was hard stuff, but the man was right. The thoughtful face of the Lord Paramount grew resolute.

“I admit the logic of it.” The white hand clenched.

“I believe the Germans have the most powerful explosives in the world,” said Gerson. “If we left it at that they’d be on the top. They’re still the ingenious devils they always were. The Republic didn’t alter much — and now that’s over for good, thank God. ‘Ware their chemists, say I! All the same we, as it happens, just now, and God knows for how long, have absolutely the lead in poison gas. Absolutely. It happens — so.”

“I know,” said the Lord Paramount. “Gas L.”

He was secretly pleased to see Gerson’s amazement. “But — who TOLD you of that?”

The white hand waved the question aside. “I know, my dear Gerson,” smiled the Lord Paramount. “I happen to know. Works at Cayme, eh?”

“Well, there you are! If we had a war in Europe now we could astonish the world. . . . Do you know ALL about Gas L?”

“I don’t,” said the Lord Paramount. “Tell me.”

“WELL,” said Gerson, “well,” and leant forward over his clenched fists on the table in a pose that was somehow suggestive of a cat with its forefeet tucked under it. He stuck his head on one side.

He gave information reluctantly and confusedly. He was not accustomed to give information to anyone. He was not accustomed to give anything to anyone. But gradually before the mind of the Lord Paramount the singularity of Gas L became plain.

This was the gas Camelford had spoken of at that dinner at Sir Bussy’s which still haunted his mind. This was the unknown gas that needed the rare earths and basic substances that it seemed only Cayme in Cornwall could supply. Even at the time, that gas had touched Mr. Parham’s imagination and set him speculating. “Don’t the scientific men, the real scientific men know about it?” he asked. “The devil of all this scientific warfare is that science keeps no secrets, and there’s always someone, in some other country, hard on your track. Look how we tackled the German gas on the western front. In a week or so.”

“You’re right, precisely,” said Gerson, “and that is just why I’d like to get to business with Gas L before very long. Before it’s blown upon. Before they’ve set men to think it out. It’s true that Cayme MAY be the only source of the stuff, and in that case the British monopoly is assured. But are we safe?”

The Lord Paramount nodded. But he wanted more particulars.

The real poison it seemed was not Gas L, but Gas L combined with nearly a hundred times its volume of air. It was very compressible. You let a little sizzle out from its reservoir, it vaporized, expanded, and began to combine. “It hurts. You remember those cats in the experimental chamber,” said Gerson. It didn’t decompose for weeks. It drift............