League of Nations Condemns Japanese Use of Poison Gas

On may 14, 1938 the League of Nations issued a resolution condemning the use of poison gas by Japan in its war with China. The gases in question, mustard gas and Lewisite, were used against both Chinese regular troops and guerrillas.

Poison gas seems to have had a particular reputation at this time that caused many people’s capacity for moral outrage to be mobilized against it. You could bomb, burn, shoot and stab all you wanted and while you might be judged on the basis of whom you did this to, you would not be judged as evil per se based on your methods. Use poison gas however and that was evil per se. Franklin Roosevelt, who as president of the United States during World War II authorized or acquiesced in all manner of killing and mayhem was adamant and explicit that the United States would not use poison gas (e.g. at Iwo Jima where it could be argued that the Japanese would be just as dead but would suffer less while American casualties would be much less – no the Japanese had to be bombed, burned, shot and stabbed “by hand” and at great cost in American killed, crippled and wounded.)

As a child growing up in the 1950’s I gradually became aware that, a few pacifists aside, general opinion among the adults around me who had grown up in the the 1930’s was that I could be killed by nuclear blast or radiation and that would be very unfortunate. On the other hand I could take comfort in the fact that many Russian children would suffer the same fate in retaliation. On yet the other hand however, if I was killed by poison gas that would be outrageous and clear evidence of the Soviet capacity for unmitigated evil.

Which is to say that in the 1930’s being condemned for the use of poison gas was a real public relations disaster if what you were hoping for was the good opinion of the American people. The League of Nations condemnation was another victory for China in its battle for American public opinion. It was another step in the establishment of an American view that, after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese were deserving of no mercy in the course America’s pursuit of just retribution and that virtually any means to get there (except, of course, poison gas) was legitimate.

Richard Overy in his book on World War II, Why the Allies Won, has a chapter on the competing claims of the two sides for the moral high ground. I give him credit for including such a chapter although I believe it has a lot of unsupported claims and a lot of discussion that doesn’t lead to useful conclusions. However, I do understand him to make one important point which is that for the United States and Britain to believe that they were fighting a just war made necessary by the evil qualities of their opponents was an important and sustaining motivational factor for two countries that could not employ, ideology, coercion, a sense of aggrieved nationalism or a claim that national survival was at stake to the same extent that their opponents did.