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On the road to Arras, France, in August 1918, American
artist John Singer Sargent observed a field dressing station to
which victims of mustard gas were being taken. His evocative painting
of the scene, "Gassed," has been described in part as
follows:
"Under a sky whose color is reminiscent of the gas, a line
of blindfolded soldiers staggers toward the tent on the right...Yet
it is the central tableau of nine sightless men, still carrying
their gear and their guns, that rivets our attention. They are being
helped along by two orderlies, one of whom warns of a small step,
and in response the third soldier, in a gesture that marks this
as a moment frozen in time, lifts his foot to exaggerated height
to avoid tripping. ...no other work of art conveys more powerfully
both the fury and fortitude of World War I."
Reacting to the catastrophic casualties from the use of chemical
warfare in World War I, the 1922 Washington Treaty reemphasized
The Hague Conference's ban on the use of "noxious gases."
In 1925, the Geneva Convention generalized this to a ban on the
use of all chemical weapons. In addition, between 1920 and 1926
the International Commission of Control, created by the Treaty of
Versailles, attempted (unsuccessfully, as it turned out) to prevent
German rearmament by a comprehensive system of surprise inspections
at the armament factories that soon were to support Adolf Hitler's
Third Reich.
Sargent's painting measures 20 feet by nine feet and is owned by
the Imperial War Museum, London. It is reproduced here with their
permission.
Princeton Professor Theodore Rabb's descriptive comments above
are quoted from Military History Quarterly, copyright 1999
by Cowles History Group, Inc., d/b/a PRIMEDIA Enthusiast Publications,
741 Miller Drive SE, Suite D-2, Leesburg, VA 20175 (Subscriptions:
800-827-1218; outside the US: 740-382-3322). Used with permission.
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