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Chemical weapons were widely used by the United Kingdom in World War I, and while the use of chemical weapons was suggested by Churchill and others postwar in Mesopotamia and in World War II, it appears that they were not actually used, although some historians disagree. While the UK was a signatory of the Hague Conventions (1899 and 1907) which outlawed the use of poison gas shells, the conventions omitted mention of deployment from cylinders, probably because that had not been considered. The United Kingdom ratified the Geneva Protocol on 9 April 1930. The UK signed the Chemical Weapons Convention on 13 January 1993 and ratified it on 13 May 1996. == Use in World War I == During the First World War, in retaliation to the use of chlorine by Germany against British troops from April 1915 onwards, British forces deployed chlorine themselves for the first time during the Battle of Loos on 25 September 1915. By the end of the war, poison gas use had become widespread on both sides and by 1918 a quarter of artillery shells were filled with gas and Britain had produced around 25,400 tons of toxic chemicals. Britain used a range of poison gases, originally chlorine and later phosgene, diphosgene and mustard gas. They also used relatively small amounts of the irritant gases chloromethyl chloroformate, chloropicrin, bromacetone and ethyl iodoacetate. Gases were frequently mixed, for example ''white star'' was the name given to a mixture of equal volumes of chlorine and phosgene, the chlorine helping to spread the denser but more toxic phosgene. Despite the technical developments, chemical weapons suffered from diminishing effectiveness as the war progressed because of the protective equipment and training which the use engendered on both sides. Mustard gas was first used effectively in World War I by the German army against British and Canadian soldiers near Ypres, Belgium, in 1917 and later also against the French Second Army. The name ''Yprite'' comes from its usage by the German army near the town of Ypres. The Allies did not use mustard gas until November 1917 at Cambrai, France, after the armies had captured a stockpile of German mustard-gas shells. It took the British more than a year to develop their own mustard gas weapon, with production of the chemicals centred on Avonmouth Docks.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Photographic Archive of Avonmouth Bristol BS11 )〕 (The only option available to the British was the Despretz–Niemann–Guthrie process). This was used first in September 1918 during the breaking of the Hindenburg Line with the Hundred Days' Offensive. The use of chemical weapons in warfare during the Great War was in violation of the 1899 Hague Declaration Concerning Asphyxiating Gases and the 1907 Hague Convention on Land Warfare, which explicitly forbade the use of "poison or poisoned weapons" in warfare. == Between the wars == After the war, the Royal Air Force dropped diphenyl chloroarsine, an irritant agent designed to cause uncontrollable coughing, on Bolshevik troops in 1919,〔 4 September 2007 about.com〕 == Proposed use in World War II == 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Chemical weapons and the United Kingdom」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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