Wow, the article is full of just enough half-truths that I wonder what its real intent was. You get the impression from it that Germany was the first to use ch

Wow, the article is full of just enough half-truths that I wonder what its real intent was. You get the impression from it that Germany was the first to use chemical weapons in the Great War — but it wasn't: France started, with the use of tear gas. Use of gas projectors did not violate the 1899 Hague Declaration against use of gas-filled projectiles. Use of irritants like chlorine arguably didn't violate the 1904 Hague Convention on use of poison or poisoned weapons (is an irritant a poison? does dosage matter?). The first German use of chemical weapons (tear gas, again) was on the Eastern Front, near Warsaw, not at Ypres. I don't know if the use of chlorine at Ypres was intended as an irritant or a poison — it's been too long since I studied the history. > As Germany’s population grew along with their economy, the newly formed country became ambitious. The decision was made to further their status in the world by attacking France through Belgium. That's a description of the beginning of the Great War so short that it's a lie. It's not as though the Germans woke up one morning and thought, 'hey, let's invade France!' The reason Germany attacked France was that Russia had mobilised on her eastern borders, while France was mobilising to her west (and the belief was that France was the far deadlier foe). This was in an era in which a mobilised army was believed to mean almost certain victory. And the reason that Germany invaded Belgium was that the French frontier was too heavily fortified. As it turned out, that was a good operational decision but an extraordinarily poor strategic one: while the German Army almost got to Paris, violation of Belgian neutrality led to Britain's entry into the war.