"Gassed."
The fiendish ingenuity of modern warfare has placed at the service of the combatants many horrible weapons, but none more horrible than clouds of poisonous gas. This gas is formed in great quantities and is carried by favoring winds over the enemies' trenches. Over No Man's Land it rolls, a ghastly green fog. It hugs the ground and falls into the ditches, filling them with choking, mysterious death. It grips the throats of the soldiers, blanches their faces with a frightful corpselike aspect, and fills their veins with insidious poison. It is more deadly than bullets, more frightful than bombs. Until the "gas-masks" were invented, it made miserable wrecks of thousands. Even now, woe to the soldier who is caught without his mask when the fearful cloud spreads out over the field.
A soldier who is thus victimized is said to be "gassed." The new verb is a good one, and is likely to outlast the war.
It applies to many an audience, gasping and benumbed in the fog of wordy oratory.
It applies to many thinkers, "gassed" by infidel sneers and faithless philosophy.
It applies to certain theologians, their minds poisoned by skeptical theories "made in Germany" but adopted with great eagerness by America.
It applies to political parties, seized by the subtle passion for power and spoils.
It applies to communities, over which the noxious plague of slander drifts with fatal effect.
"Gassing," indeed, is woefully common, for it is a favorite trick of the devil. He has found that silent weapons are the deadliest, that miasmas work the most awful mischief, and that it is easier to dodge a bomb than a fog.
"Blowers" have been made, to force these deadly gases back upon the foe that sent them forth. Let us set to work the blower of heroic truth, and beat the devil at his own game.