13 July 2012

War and Suicide

Fritz Haber was a German war hero for his invention of the poison chlorine gas used to kill French soldiers in the First World War. "His wife of thirty-two years, Clara, had long condemned his work as inhumane and immoral and demanded he stop, but to such concerns he gave a stock reply: death was death, no matter the cause." Nine days after the first gas attack in which he proved the efficacy of his poison and tools for delivering it, Clara committed suicide.
[story from In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson.]

Meanwhile, this year, American soldiers are killing themselves at a rate of 1 per day.

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