JF Ptak Science Books  Post 2904

J.B. S. Haldane (1892-1964, scientist/philosopher/veteran/Communist) contributed a provocative little one-hour read warfare and morality, making a case for the use of chemical weapons during war. I thought that this might be a Modest Proposal exercise, but it isn’t, at least to my reading of it. Callinicus, a Defense of Chemical Warfare (London 1925) is a call for expanding arms if arms is what was needed and if fighting was going to happen. Haldane would’ve been much happier with no fighting whatsoever, but if it were to be the case–again–he didn’t see much of a difference between chemical weapons and other sorts of armaments, as they both killed and wounded and incapacitated. A weapon is a weapon.

“Why do we accept the invention of Major-General Shrapnel but prohibit the use of chemical weapons in war?” is what Haldane asks, and then proceeds to make his case.  

The book’s title draws on the Syrian officer Callincus, who created the “Greek Fire” weapon, a flammable liquid, in in the Eastern Roman Empire in the 8th century CE. (“Callinicus¹ Of Heliopolis, Callinicus also spelled Kallinikos, (born AD 673), architect who is credited with the invention of Greek fire, a highly incendiary liquid that was projected from “siphons” to enemy ships or troops and was almost impossible to extinguish.” Encyclopedia Britannica)

An officer in 1914, Haldane was with the Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment), and served with distinction, and did so at a relatively young age, and so was a witness² to all manner of weaponry during the Great War. He makes a case for chemical weapons to be less grizzly than many other existing weapons and of those to come–and in the future category he gives a hat-tip to the possible invention of a weapon that sounded a lot like an atomic bomb.  It is an interesting discussion–one that backs you into a very disturbing corner, very quickly³. 

Haldane ends the work so: “Such are the facts of chemical warfare. They will not be believed because a belief in them would do violence to the sentiments of most people.”

Notes.

A reminder that Haldane is the osurce for an often-repeated quote about the nature of the universe: “My own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.”

1. “Born in Syria, Callinicus was a Jewish refugee who was forced to flee the Arabs to Constantinople. The ingredients of Greek fire were kept a state secret, known only by the Byzantine emperor and Callinicus’ family, which manufactured it. The precise composition is still unknown, but it is generally accepted that it was a mixture of naphtha, pitch, sulfur, possibly saltpetre, and some unknown ingredients. First used in the Battle of Cyzicus (c. AD 673) by the Byzantines against a Saracen fleet off Constantinople, Greek fire proved to be instrumental in that Byzantine victory.”–Encyclopedia Britannica

2. Haldane also saw service during the war in the British chemical warfare program.

3. “In Callinicus, Haldane makes the case for chemical weapons as a more humane, eugenic and ultimately more effective and efficient means of prosecuting modern warfare. In this bold advocacy, Haldane was facing an uphill battle, against the British press, who had propagandized against the ‘godless Hun’ and his poison gases, the fearful and scandalized public, and even his colleagues in the eugenics movement, who largely lamented modern warfare as dysgenic.”–Eugenics Archive (Canada) online timeline