"I am against war," said Major General Amos A. Fries, chief of the Chemical Warfare Service of the United States Army at a luncheon given in his honor t the Union yesterday.
"I have had enough of war," continues General Fries, "but I have a boy, and if he has to go to war, I want it to be a white man's war, where he will have an equal chance with the other fellow."
Hall Introduces Speaker
General Fries, who is an experienced engineer and the man who built up the Chemical Warfare Service from its beginning as the Gas and Flame Division of the engineers Corps, spoke on "Recent Developments in chemical Warfare." The speaker was introduced by Professor Edwin H. Hall, Rumford Professor of Physics, Emeritus, who reminded his audience that every man present might have to decide his course of conduct in reference to the next war, and would have to choose among pacifism, diplomatic peace, and military preparedness as means of preventing future conflicts.
General Fries, commenting on Professor Hall's remarks, said "Man has always fought with the things he has used in peace."
A nation threatened with invasion, according to General Fries, is justified in doing almost anything in the way of warfare. "If I had to break a treaty to defend my country from invasion, I'd break it! Abhor war, but abhor slavery worse!
Good Officers Were Scarce
"During the war good officers were scarce. We had to organize everything in the service; and we had to do it three thousand miles from home, with no home base to draw on. I kept grabbing up all the good officers so that finally, they used to promote the good men to keep me from getting them.
"We had only college men in the Chemical Warfare Service except in the gas section. I refused enlisted men absolutely who had been in the Regular Army five years because he would have lacked the broadness of vision necessary in our branch of the service. The enlisted man would be better than the average sort of college graduates we had for about six months, but then the college man would pick up and pas him by the end of a year. I didn't expect the war to end in a year and it didn't."
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