Germany knows what a war-ruined city is. Oppau lies in the dust of devastation--a ruin as complete as if the Kaiser's advancing army had gone over it with shot and shell and murderous shooting parties. A little bit of Flanders and Belgium has rolled backward across the Rhine. The explosion of the "new gas" which Germans are said to have been preparing was quite as sudden as was the descent of the German devestation upon Dinant and Louvain in 1914. Oppau is hoist with Germany's own petard.

It is a sad disaster--but not so sad as the ravage of 1914, for it is an accident lacking the element of intention. But accidents may breathe with the breath of Nemesis, and whether there be intention or not, the Oppau calamity is a part of the history of the war. For who are those that the seeking out the bodies of the dead among the ruins today? They are French soldiers, and it is the French officers who will investigate the causes of the explosion. --The Boston Transcript.