ABSTRACT
Without the pressure of a groundswell of American public opinion directed specifically against gas, there was nothing to cause the administration to focus its attention on this aspect of the war. The military establishment, whose primary function was to prepare the country for war, however remote or unpleasant the contingency might be, failed utterly in the fulfillment of this responsibility by ignoring the question of gas warfare. In testifying at the 1920 Army Reorganization Act hearings, Benedict Crowell recalled the growth of chemical warfare during the war and stated that "our offensive in 1919, in the author's opinion, would have been a walk to Berlin, due to chemical warfare. Churchill, in describing the plans for the war in 1919, inferred the path that the war was treading: "At the Ministry of Munitions people were the bees of Hell, and people stored hives with the pure essence of slaughter".
