It should be noted that the use of such weapons was not prohibited by the Hague Convention, save in so far as it might be called a weapon " calculated to cause unnecessary suffering " - a phrase which is susceptible of many interpretations. Already in the winter of 1914-5 they appeared sporadically on the western front, and they obtained their first striking success in the Bois d'Avocourt (Verdun) on Feb. Like other weapons of siegecraft this was brought into the field as soon as the nature of the fighting changed from open-field warfare to trench warfare. In reality therefore the flamethrower dates from experiments made in Germany a few years before the World War, when, no doubt in consequence of the trench warfare of Port Arthur, Richard Fiedler produced in 1906 a service model which was under experiment when the war broke out. But until modern methods of storing a gas propellant under pressure came into being, anything in the nature of an effective flamethrower was impossible. From time to time in modern history proposals have been made for flame-throwing devices, and one such was actually experimented with in Prussia about 1700. The townspeople of a mediaeval city, having only massacre to expect if their walls were stormed, observed no limitations in their choice of weapons, and not only used incendiaries proper to destroy the besiegers' hoarding-work and catapults but also boiling oil against the bodies of the men. The World War revived the old weapon of " liquid fire." No doubt, the use of incendiary projectiles and devices had never altogether vanished from modern warfare, but these have usually been employed for destruction of material rather than for effect on personnel, and we have to go back to the sieges of mediaeval times to find examples of the use of heat, as such, to repulse an enemy.
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