"Poison Fog"

During the winters of 1897, 1902, 1911 and last week Belgians experienced the dread phenomenon of "poison fog." In their Royal Palace at Brussels last week King Albert and Queen Elisabeth received dreadful tidings that men, women, animals (no children), were gasping, choking, dying in a fog which filled the valley of the River Meuse from Liege down through Namur. On the fourth day the fog lifted, on the fifth Queen Elisabeth motored through the stricken valley, where 67 human lives had been lost, was rousingly cheered. The Belgian Government officially announced that the deaths were due "solely to the cold fog," thus scotching rumors that War gases buried by the retreating German Armies had escaped. As on the three previous occasions when "poison" fogs have appeared, apparently no one in the panic stricken Meuse Valley thought to bottle a sample of the fog before it blew away. With nothing to work upon last week (for bereaved relatives delayed, attempts to obtain the bodies of fog-victims for autopsy), scientists could only guess what may have happened. Guesses: "Deadly gases from the tail of a dissipated comet."--Professor Victor Levine of Creighton University, Omaha, Neb. "Germs brought from the Near East by the winds which have carried dust from the Sahara Desert to Europe recently, producing muddy rains."--Colonel Joaquin Enrique Zanetti, Wartime poison gas expert, chemistry professor at Columbia University, Manhattan. "I did not allude to the Bubonic Plague in speaking of the Belgian fog. I said pneumonic plague. I meant ... an acute respiratory infection attacking the lungs." --Famed J. B. S. Haldane, reader in biochemistry at Cambridge University, correcting worldwide reports that he had said Belgium was suffering from a return of the medieval "Black Death." Coincidence. Experts of the French Army were busy last week at Lille (80 mi. from the stricken Meuse Valley) producing enormous clouds of what they called "a cheap, harmless artificial fog made from chalk, sulphuric acid and tar products which will be extremely useful to hide the movements of troops in war time."

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