‘Chemical Warfare Will Not Assume Importance Until the Outbreak of the Next Serious War’
HALDANE, J. B. S. Callinicus. In Defence of Chemical Warfare. London: Kegan Paul. 1925.
Small 8vo. Publisher’s glazed black boards with printed labels to front board and spine, in the original printed dust-jacket; pp. [viii, with initial blank], 84, [4 (blank)]; small chip to dust-jacket at head of spine and small inkspot to front cover, slight foxing to top- and fore-edges, the odd spot internally; a very good copy.
Uncommon first edition, first printing, rare in the dust-jacket, of this curious and controversial work by one of the twentieth century’s great geniuses, polymaths and scientific minds, a cult figure since the 1920s.
John Burdon Sanderson Haldane (1892–1964), without any higher scientific degree, became one of the leading geneticists and lecturers at Cambridge and coined the terms ‘clone’ and ‘cloning’ as understood in the modern sense. A committed Marxist, his influence reached from Aldous Huxley (Brave New World) to science fiction writers such as Arthur C. Clarke, who called Haldane ‘perhaps the most brilliant science populariser of his generation’.
Writing in the aftermath of the First World War (in which he served as a captain), Haldane here examines the fifteen different types of poisonous gas used during the Great War and discusses their effects: ‘Some soldiers poisoned by these substances had to be prevented from committing suicide; others temporarily went raving mad, and tried to burrow into the ground’; in spite of this, Haldane argues that the effects are only temporary, and that the large majority of soldiers recovered after forty-eight hours. Ever the realist, he prepares his audience for the likelihood of the use of chemicals in future wars. ‘I doubt whether objecting to it [war] we are likely to avoid it in the future, however lofty our motives or disinterested our conduct.
War will be prevented only by a scientific study of its causes, such as has prevented most epidemic diseases’ (p. 3). Notably, he argues that the government should ‘seriously consider the provision of gas-masks for the population of London and other large towns, and the instruction of school-children in their use’ (p. 36), his observations preceding the UK government’s 1939 decision to issue gas masks to civilians by fifteen years. ‘If this is not done, there is at least the possibility of a disaster of the very first magnitude at an early stage in the next war’ (ibid.). He also emphasises the importance of scientific education for civilians and soldiers in preparation for future wars; his methods – if slightly unorthodox – would play a significant role during the Second World War. ‘Though I have seen a good many scientific experiments on animals, I have never seen one which […] I should object to having performed on myself’ (p. 75).
Haldane’s father, the physiologist John Scott Haldane (1860–1936), conducted extreme experiments on both himself and his son in an attempt to study gas poisoning, e.g. breathing in toxic gases in contained spaces, using his observations to develop early gas masks during the First World War. During the Second World War, J. B. S. Haldane’s own self-experiments on decompression sickness, or ‘the bends’, were instrumental in allowing him and his team to develop breathing apparatuses and miniature submarines used in the Allied landing on D-Day.
A second, revised edition appeared later in the same year, as did a New York edition published by E.P. Dutton and Co.
SKU: 2121132