one german officer suggested quote bombing london would cause panic in the population, rendering it doubtful that the work could be continued. and another said that if we do is frightful, then make frightful as germany's salvation. that word would be taken up in the british press like in america to symbolize germany's actions that year of 1915. however, the officer failed to convince the kaiser tasha wilhelm. why? because his feeling for british relations, this british cousins were highly ambivalent. he didn't wish to either kill them or destroy their palaces or indeed damage many of the landmarks of which he was fond. he considered that to quote indiscriminate bombing is bad when it means and kills old women and children. he went on if one could set fire to london in 30 paces then perhaps it would give way to something fine and powerful. all the flies, he said, should be concentrated on that city. what about poison gas? the debate here was less expensive. i think part of because it was intended for battlefield use against troops and probably because it was such a new option. no country had developed frozen gas as a weapon before the war began. but the military use was pioneered by this gentleman here, a german chemist who is head of the kaiser wilhelm institute in berlin. he was working in such haste that the major explosion in his laboratory killed three of his coworkers your but he argues that would shorten the war producing not only casualties of mass panic amongst in the troops. would start psychological warfare. by january 1915 he had a weapon sufficiently advanced for him to go to demonstrate it to an enthusiastic german high command. meanwhile, the answer to breaking the military stalemate was seen by this gentleman here, winston churchill, first lord of the admiralty, to be a landing to attack germany's ally turkey. churchill, the political head of admiralty, and the professional head of the admiralty has received lord were responsible for britain's defenses both against submarines and against area bombardment. although neither of those men agreed with some british admirals, that's a quote, submarines were underhand, unfettered and damned on english. it took a few measures to counteract the new underwater threat. what about air attacks? despite churchill's feeling about airships which he described as monsters or enormous bladders of combustible and explosive gas he recognized the possibility of bombing roads on london. he instituted a blackout. but beyond that there is will to belittle that he could really do since the primitive aircraft could scarcely reached altitudes to run 10,000 feet at which the zeppelins flew. the world's first poison gas attack forum on the morning of 22nd of april 1915 at half past five. when the wind was favorable, german engineers opened the taps and 6000 soldiers of chlorine gas releasing 168 tons of it on french and canadian troops. what was the effect? chlorine is a powerful irritant that it damages eyes, nose, throat and lungs. it causes death by this sexy asian. the release of a sickly greenish yellow gas was personally supervised by harper wrote that during wartime, a scientist belongs to his country. but in peacetime belongs to the world. although the french troops abandoned their positions leaving it for my wild gap in the -- they held firm in the german soldiers failed to take advantage of the breach. we have some idea of the effects of this gas. a french general described what he wrote some 100 poor fellows laying out from a church slowly drowning with water in the lungs. it was a most horrible sight and the doctor quite powerless. over the next few days we have german troops launching further gas attacks. this time on the british as well as on the french and the canadians. i like soldiers had to improvise, sometimes as rudimentary -- to combat the gas. one guest scottish soldier described how it felt, he wrote a gasping gasping for breath. my body recovered, i was wounded in my mind. that psychological effect was exactly what had been intended. meanwhile, britain's war minister depicted here, he replies to a request from his commander in the field for the means to retaliate saying that before we fall to the level of the degraded germans i have to submit this matter to government. the british government took very little time to upgrade to initiate british production of gas. however, meanwhile the german high command had given him enough time to build up much larger supplies of chlorine. he raised a complaint that if they had followed my advice and made a large scale attack instead of this experiment, he called it germany would have won the war. but meanwhile, on the 30th of april just eight days after the first gas attack, we have the german submarine commanded by a 30 year old leaving her north sea base. and that same day at the german embassy in washington sending a message to be published in the new york papers the following morning. on the first of may people sitting in their apartments opening their newspapers saw something rather strange. the german statement warning american passengers and others not to take passage on british or allied ships, juxtaposed with the team advertisement. let's just take a look at the german notice. it's absolutely specific at the bottom of that anybody intending to sail on ships of great britain or britain's allies into the war zone do so at their own risk. but very few passengers change their plans. most of them like vanderbilt sitting next to the theatrical charles furman had trusted in the statement by the boston born charles sumner, that the lusitania gains steam, the fastest of the atlantic will protect her from threatened attacks on german u-boat indistinct on path. but as well as for passengers the lusitania was carrying perfectly legally i should say many cases of remington rifle ammunition. and it was as the ship began near the wars of an evening of the sixth of may that her captain william turner received a vaguely worded warning from the british admiralty who by the state of the war were breaking the german naval code editor told him that german submarines acted in the area that the ship was about to enter. turner wore his passengers to please not to smoke on deck that night, or to return to their cabins to pull there curtains tight could not chug-a-lug. it was next day on seventh of may, 1915 our ship soliciting was just off the coast of ireland and the smudge of land on the island reassured many passengers. however, back to 10 that afternoon the year 20 had the lusitania in his sights and he ordered his torpedo officer to fire. a look out on the liner saw what he later called white streaks running across the surface of the water. he said it was in this hand of drunk on the ocean with a piece of chalk, two white lines streaming out behind. a torpedo, of course put a passenger felt what he called a slight shock through the deck editor of the explosion. this was a drawing done by survivor that was later published in the illustrated london news. just 18 minutes later after immediately taken a leftist our board, that 30000-ton ship slipped beneath the waves. all of the private life boards have been fairly torn from the positions had dropped into the water. men and women had left into the seat trying to swim. we have one american passenger who described his valiant rescue attempt. he managed to pull people into the lifeboat with any severe from somebody existing debris around in a woman's voice saying and just and natural tone as he she asked for a slice bread and butter please, won't you help me? you know i can't win. he said looking around he saw the woman and she had a smile on her face and she was chewing gum. i salute that woman. he pulled her in and proctor to safety. but that night as another survivor wrote, a procession of rescue ships drew alongside from queenstown in county court or called as we call it today. the corpses were stacked like cord wood among the coast of rope on the shadowy cold war. of the 1959 people who had been aboard that ship, 1198 died, including 128 citizens of the been neutral united states, and 94 children. the german government hailed the sinking as to quote from a german newspaper, a triumph of our courage seamanship and superior technology. among those who were delighted was the prime prensa telegraphed his father from the western front to tell them of the great joy among the troops at the news coming to say that the war single-mindedly as it renewed the campaign, the faster the war would end. city on the eighth of may the very day after the sinking, here in the 17th century courthouse just up the coast from cove we had the irish corner reporting the verdict of willful murder by the german authorities on the death of the victims. too late. he received an urgent message from the british admiralty that was ordering of to hold the inquest for fear of revealing naval secrets. why? it was also because churchill here in admiral fisher standing side-by-side the coming under criticism in the press and in parliament about why they hadn't done more to protect the lusitania. but there's also something else at work fisher and churchill feared incorrectly as it later turned out that the large quantities of american rifle ammunition being ported in the ship's cargo might have exploded at the moment the torpedo hit hastening the ships and. had this printer it would have -- a massive propaganda advanced to the sinking of broader. is the world's sympathy. church on fisher didn't want anything to be said that would undermine that. as a result they begin orchestrating a cover-up to receive the inevitable public inquiry that they knew would be held into the last. but meanwhile, in germany, we have this lady here come herself quarreling with her husband who i just returned about the morale of his use of poison gas. on the 15th of may a mere three weeks after the first gas attack she was so distressed as she took her husband's service revolver, went into the garden other urban village and shot herself. that same day harbor left for the eastern front to continue it defines the use of chlorine gas to be used now as a weapon against the russians. but he soon returned to berlin to continue work on a yet more lethal gas. this was -- but it's not, we use -- on the third of may 1915, the kaiser finally permitted the bombing of london. it was dusk the next day when third base after the first gas attacks, since the lusitania sank under 103rd day of the first world war to two zeppelins each 530 feet long 60-foot in diameter and filled with over a million cubic feet of gas took off to attack london. one of them has to turn back, so this flew on alone at its top speed of over six feet miles per hour. around 11 p.m. the airship was over a london residential district on which he dropped the first bomb ever to fall on the city. no one was seriously injured but from there the airship looped south of the city hopping bombs as it went among the buildings hit with a whiskey distillery a synagogue and a bamboo furniture factory. here we have a picture of the devastation of the first raid on london. seven people were killed, including an eight year-old boy samuel rubin, on his way home from the cinema come and 35 people were injured. the captain described how he released one of the most damaging bombs. his words here. he said, my finger hovered on the button that electrically operated a bombing operator. then i pressed it and we waited. minutes seem to past before about the humming sound of the engines it was a shattering rule, cascade of orange sparks shot upward and a bill of incandescent smoke drifted slowly away to reveal a red gash of raging fire on the face of the wounded city. in the aftermath, a london corners in quest hard have a middle aged couple had been trapped by fire in the bedroom. they were discovered dead kneeling by the bed as if in prayer. the husband's arm around his wife. the corner of the verdict on those killed were willful murder by germany. exactly as it had been on the sinking of the lusitania three weeks on the. into united states we have the government under president wilson by not arguing about just how far to press the protest to germany about the loss of the lusitania and their demand that to me these are campaign of unrestricted submarine warfare. most u.s. public opinion had been massively hostile to the sinking, by william jennings bryant, secretary of state wilson's approach to the allies is becoming far too out of. if inward about this before the loss of the lusitania. and one day in cabinet he said to his colleagues you are not being fair. give people are simply not being mutual. you are taking sides. he got a testy response from the president. he went home that weekend to think things over and when the weekend ended he resigned. later it would be the end of his political career but he would be reviled, and he was correct. this is typical of the sort of cartoons depicted here in the american press. what we are seeing is the kaiser applauding his reasons for resigning. but meanwhile, just at this time in london officials were busily preparing their evidence to put before the official inquiry into the sinking. they were sifting selecting and shaping the evidence. for a while they even considered -- but then they had the idea of suggesting that what had caused the lusitania to think so this was that she had been sought by two torpedoes, not a single one that they knew perfectly well from the code of german messages have actually been fired. accordingly, they selected witnesses prepared to back up their story. they went about those with other stories to tell to appear. and the inquiry itself indeed placed the blame unequivocally on germany whose submarine, it concluded, had fired the two or more torpedoes that hit the ship. but meanwhile, while that inquiry had been sitting, the public in london had nervously been speculating about the possibility of another raid. and their fears were proved correct from the night of 17th of august when the airship drop bombs at random over london before returning onstage debate. the heart of the city of the region which is some of you may know. this raid on several londoners even for the. in what they called sapling weather, dark finite london reported much smaller audiences. an american reporter who is in london described one zeppelin raid. he said among the stars float along on airship. it is yellow, the color of the harvest moon searchlights reaching up from the city are touching all sides of the death messengers with their white tips. great feeling shakes the city. it is the sound of zeppelin bombs falling, killing, burning. and another onlooker recalled seeing a streak of fire shooting down straight at me. he said, i stared at it hardly poppe hinting, but one struck a restaurant just a few yards away, then lay burning in the road. 22 people were killed and this is a londoners ventured out in the streets for better protection. but what about gas? on 25th of september, 1915 the british who had at first vehemently condemned germany's use of it justified much previously made their own military use of it during a battle. they attacked -- the attack failed to the winds of change. up with a lot of the cast back over the bridge troops. the long-term peace had been set with many of the 5000 cylinders of chlorine so that the contents could simply not be released. even worse, german shell exploded some of the cylinders causing yet more damaging gas to escape into the british line. in fact, as 1915 due to a close none of the three technologies have had a decisive effect. then in spring 1916 we have the kaiser giving in to u.s. demands that germany these are unrestricted submarine campaign. admiral fisher wrote his adversary a concerning letter. this is what he said. you are the one german sailor who understands war. kill your enemy without being killed yourself. he said, i don't blame you from the southern this is the i would have done the same myself. yours until hell freezes. however, he returned to summer in warfare against merchant shipping later that year. president wilson again protested, this time the kaiser refused to budge, and in spring 1917 the united states declared war joining the allies, but to nearly two years have passed you can see a potent in memory of the lusitania still was. this is a recruitment poster which was a copy in the museum here. if you look at the original you see that single word in this superimposed in blood red over the image of a drowning lusitania passenger. in "the new york times" news correspondents reported american troops advanced into battle in 1917-18 shouting remember the lusitania. and one contemporary commentator said that although in 1915 the lusitania had failed to deliver 200 american citizens safely to liverpool. but in 1917-18 she had delivered 2 million american troops to the western front. what was happening now with poison gas? all participants continued to use it for the remainder of the war, either released in cylinders or more laterally often as gas field artillery shells. we knew that at the worst conclusion out what stocks of poison gases were much larger than the german ones. fritz harbour have continued to lead the development german of ever more lethal gases such as mustard gas which caused skin burns as well as interest to isolate the scottish soldiers refused were anything other than kilts on their lower bodies. but fritz harbour argued even after the end of the first world war quote the use of gas was a way of saving cost those lives that meant that the work could be brought to an end sooner. indeed, become he said gas is a higher form of killing the title of my book. the indiscriminate bombing of london continued eventually the seventh performance was overtaken by a bout of british fighter planes come and germany turned to these. those are bombers. attacks led to their stretching of the american services in your panic amongst the city's inhabitants and many deaths including 18 children in one school in east and took a direct hit. but what were the consequences of all this after the war ended? after world war i disarmament conferences reaffirmed the ban on the use of gas but not on the search of stockpiling it. they pump -- advance the bombing of civilian areas and the sinking of merchant shipping or but, of course, as we go through the 1930s we see these challenged your 1936 i apologize this is an awful image to show you, the italians used mustard gas and the conquest. japan did the same in her invasion of china. worried that germany like italy might in spite of having ratified that geneva protocol might be prepared to use gas in any future conflict. we have britain and france building up stocks of gas to retaliate if necessary. they also took precautions. by 1938 the british home for example, had used 30 million gas masks to the public including heart respirators for babies. their greatest fear was that attacking bombers would release a gas. the bombers destructive power have again been shown a year earlier in april 1937 during the spanish civil war when german and italian planes destroyed this, killing 16 other people and leaving the british archbishop of canterbury to claim the phrase off my dose today, weapons of mass destruction, to describe their bombs. such was the fear of mass bombing and of gas bombing in particular that when world war ii broke out in september 1939 in britain everyone was ordered always to carry a gas mask with them come and children were evacuated out of london away from any new blitz. one government estimate we came across, a court of them in londoners would die, three to 4 million weekly and perhaps has been asked a million would become psychiatric cases. of course, both sides bombed extensively in world war ii. london, as you see here suffered another blitz. later, both britain and the u.s. views mass area bombing to destroy homburg, dressed in and tokyo. nuclear bombs destroyed hiroshima and nagasaki. such attacks were justified by the exculpation refused by harber but it was no worse than other methods of warfare that it would shorten the war and save many allied lives. what about submarine warfare? on the opening day of the second world war, winston churchill was reappointed head of the british admiralty again. that same day we have a german submarine sinking without warning the british liner off ireland. over 100 lives were lost including 28 citizens of the neutral united states. hitler's propaganda minister accused churchill of having had a bomb detonated on board to create what he called a new lusitania for his own political advantage. subsequently both sides reported to unrestricted submarine warfare. in 1942 we have u-boats sinking 8 million tons of allied shipping at the time allied shipyards could turn out some 7 million tons. it was only improvements in underwater in -- underwear protection of severance and increased air cover that brought victory to the allies in the battle of the atlantic. that no country either axis or allied use gas militarily in the second world war except for japan and china. if that's the first example of the success of mutual deterrent. but had churchill ever since we considered using gas? the answer is yes. as prime minister in 1940 he planned for the possible use of poison gas as a last resort against a new german invasion. and later in the war he showed off a memorandum which actually came to nothing but said this, i want you to think very safely over the question of using poison gas. he went on, i wouldn't use it unless it could be shown that it was life or death for us or if it was -- if it would shorten the war by a year. he said this is absurd against them rally on the topic in the last with the bombing of cities was regarded as forbidden. now everybody does it as a matter of cost. it is simply a question of fashion, changing as it does between long and short skirts for women. but president roosevelt resisted popular u.s. calls to use gas against japan, expressed in press headlines such as we should guess japan and you can cook them better with gas. but that's not to say there were no british or american casualties duty of poison gas. the allies always wanted to have gas supplies and so they could retaliate against any axis use. in the summer of 1943 the ss john harvey was lying in the harbor in italy with a cargo on board of u.s. manufactured mustard gas. 100 german bombers attacked the port getting the ship and releasing a significant amount of the gas. nearly 2000 people military and civilians, died in the raid directly because of the gas. today at 1925 geneva protocol that invention actually not ratified by the u.s. until the 1970s prohibiting the use of chemicals remains in force. but as we all know poison gas has been used since the second world war. a number of examples of it. in the yemeni civil war in the 1960s, but iraq into iran-iraq war in the 1980s. the most infamous iraqis of gas -- committee showed that u.s. us john harvey one of talk about the mustard gas attack. but the most infamous poison gas attack by iraq was against its own population of kurds here in march 1988 when 5000 kurds were killed. iraq undoubtedly possessed of poison gas during the 1991 gulf war but didn't use it again after the war iraq agreed to give up its weapons of mass destruction, and many were destroyed. however, allies suspicion that iraq had entertained some of the keys to the reason for the 2003 invasion of iraq. after the second gulf war, the only wmd discovered by some 500 h., elderly mustard gas shells. in 1997 we have the u.s. the ussr and other countries including the uk bringing into force a new chemical weapons convention. prohibiting research on and the use of such weapons and mandating that gradual destruction of existing stocks. but, of course, you'll see in the report in the news in the civil war in syria surrender of gas, mustard gas and chlorine gas had been used. as for submarines come after the second world war submarines became an increasingly important part of all the nation. you we have the british under debate at the moment back in the uk. as the bombing continues of course to be used. something which has become easier with more sophisticated guidance systems. nevertheless efforts continued continue to be made and collateral damage accepted as an inevitable consequence of the understandable preference to deport air power rather than troops, exposure own ground troops to greater hazard. so to conclude i think looking back over the century since those six weeks in 1915 where we began, the three actions that we looked at still remain relevant milestones. in 1918 this gentleman here the american philosopher commented that the one phrase of -- sorry. the one phase of oppression is in which is rightly permanently to remain is systematic utilization of the scientific expert by the military use of poison gas supervise by a later nobel prize winning scientist, fritz haber signed lost its innocence, a fact underlined by the manhattan project in the second war and potential today for biological weapons. but i want to leave the very last words to albert einstein who said this some years after the end of the first world war. that it has become appallingly this our technology has succeeded our humanity. enters we can only hope we think that he was wrong. and they are i will cease and thank you so much your thank you. [applause] thank you very much. it is somehow like to invite michael preston who is a co-author of "a higher form of killing" to come for a kind of question and answer. you a notice on either side in the auditorium down at the bottom of the stairs there are two microphones and i'm just ask that you come down to the microphone. if you're unable to walk down the stairs i can come to you. and with that go ahead and come on up, please. walk over to the other one as well. spent 20 thank you for a wonderful presentation. it was very, very nicely done. and next month i'm going to be going to the imperial war museum in england. i understand there's five imperial branches. and when i think about going to is the one that boxford has a vision for are the ones that specialize more in world war i or topics that you talked about? >> the museum the chicken go to and the raf museum, but the main museum, the main entry one reason is like at some of the best exhibits at the moment on the first world war. it's a magnificent place to go to particularly at the moment. >> thank you very much. >> the germans seemed to have a propensity to breaking international law. what was the reaction from the rest of the world when the lead advance, these three events to talk about tonight, what was the reaction from the rest of the world, if there was any? thank you. >> the reaction from well let me talk about the rest of the world probably best to say the neutral world because the response of the allies would be predictable. but the neutral world was very shocked by the sink of the lusitania with so many women and children on board, and very shocked by the aerial bombardment of london. because after all this was a direct attack on civilians. i think people very conscious that they were seeing a new type of warfare, but civilians were becoming regarded as the legitimate target. i think to surprise and shock it is the poison gas to all the weapons that we've talked about this evening, that's what i think still retains today as it did at the time particular repulsion in people's minds but it seemed in cities something you could necessary see at the time, something that you might feel the effects very long after from it but at the same time of course in contrast that we are at war. they saw the weapon of gas being used on the battlefield, so we have to have the same. >> i've always thought of as it was as kind, maybe they because they seem so dangerous to me from what i've heard did the americans or the british making the effort to develop a separate program of their own? >> the british did make some attempts to build airships, were conspicuously unsuccessful. it was never really taken seriously. and as i said, as as a sort of touched on in the talk, tried to put the effort into developing better fighter planes to deal with the menace of disciplines. at first it seemed the people of something not quite real big if you read the letters and diaries of people who witnessed these things, great celebrate cigars they said tripping across the skies above london to a seemed like something and testicle. people even wrote about the beauty of these objects until the bombings began to fall and the reality the candidate. i begin to see from the diaries what a psychological impact it had, that people no longer felt safe anywhere anytime of day or night, whatever they were doing. but it is true since about the strange and bloody things floating about upping the skies that very quickly to develop a very sinister reputation. and if you read headlines in british newspapers you find the crews of those uplifting called and denounced as baby killers. >> i have a couple of things. one, on this subject about the zeppelins come in today's star there was a very interesting article about the air attacks by the japanese towards the end of world war ii where they best randomly put balloons in the air, balloons landed or came across on the jet stream and landed mostly on the west coast. and it was quite a good story about some of the innocent victims of that. but the other thing i wanted to ask was related to what you already spoke about, about the response of the neutral world. religious leaders, what was their response? and maybe, especially the pope's response, since this was a touchy subject may be with the europeans killing europeans. >> i don't know about the pope's response to be honest i know about some church leaders in the united kingdom who preached about a just war. i know that in germany amongst various religious groups there a rabbi in berlin talked about german victory in terms of a just war that people should be supporting. i'm afraid i don't know what the pope's position was on this. >> in the hague these treaty i think 1904, -- peace treaty. i thought there was signs of poisonous gas in the submarines. there was an explosive ammunition part of that. and, of course all the killing that took place with the artillery. i wonder if you would elaborate on that? >> basically what was banned in the first hague convention was the use of dumb dumb bullets spent i think you need a mic. >> what was basically banned in the first hague convention was abusive dumb dumb bullets. which exploded in the body creating a bigger mess with any. that if your shot with an ordinary boy. they continued to be banned. they were used among others by the british i know in conflicts before the first world war. ordinary exploding shells in terms of artillery shells, the high explosives develop following the work of nobel and in of the people were not banned in that sense. >> i read a little bit about fritz harber and his rolecome and read some excellent photographs. i mean those are really fantastic. where did you get sourced on those? >> we did quite a little work in archives in berlin and there's a collection of fritz harber papers which have been brought together their indicated that they call done in which is where fritz harber's fellow was. this was the intellectual heart of berlin at the time for all the different institutes would have been funded under the aegis of the overall casual institute situated. but a lot of photographs and memorabilia to have a lot of assistance funding archivist there who would talk to us about fritz harber antiship things. we found him to talk about the duality within him come at a that stood of what happened to him of having them because of jewish background having to play the country in 1933, come to england, see the country he had devoted most of his career so he found himself rejected as an outcast, no longer allowed even to enter the kaiser wilhelm institute. the doors were barred to him. >> i remember reading that part that was a real interesting part of his history, was the fact that he was jewish. but that happens a lot i understand, a lot of really brilliant jewish scientists that, you know left. and not all of them did leave which was unfortunate. >> it was very good that some of them left because they were the ones about give up the atomic weapons your rather than anywhere else. >> i would just say a quick bit on fritz harber, the way we perceive poison gas. we did, to britain, a number of scientists and their set up a trust to help the jewish colleagues find jobs in academic institutions in the united kingdom and they were perfectly prepared to help harber find somewhere to work but a leading member of the british scientific establishment ernest rutherford, was not prepared to shake his hand because he was the first maker of poison gas spill are there more questions to other? it will be a time after for diane and michael, but we have one last question. >> i've been watching this document on netflix called the 14 diaries of war about the world war one come and on one of the episodes they touched on the poison gas used by the germans and talked about how, over time a tactic changed to come instead of just mass killings, like not killing but exhausting them from a psychological effect as well but exhausting and draining the british and french you know, treasures to care for them. went to that tactic take place and we did that become sort of the norm speak of it was always part of the tactic a psychological effect, that as the years went on basically by getting the troops always felt we were in gas mask then look out, to have some stress it can make their fighting ability much less because you can fight less well when wearing all that equipment. that came perhaps with mustard come and they were very clever trick they used to put tear gas in with some of the other gases so that they would try and get into eyes so they would pull their masks off. and an american general talking about gas said, the greatest benefit to military outcast was not excite which is unshakable was not that he killed people but we condemn and weakened their fighting ability, weekend their morale. >> it's one of the things that fritz harber wrote right at the beginning. you don't what he called a psychological that gas use what pied beauty people's minds. as mike said, they would always be frightened, always what about whether it would be deployed against them. this would be very debilitating and this was much more significant to him and the physical damage that gas could cause. >> thank you. thank you. [applause] >> ladies and gentlemen this has been a rich if you want to draw your attention to a new exhibition which is opened last weekend. one of the most comprehensive exhibitions at the museum has created with more than 20 countries represented in the exhibition. of the more than 150 objects including many of the things we have discussed here, putting some deck chairs on the lusitania, but that there is gas mask and casualty products. of the more than 150 objects only one has been previously exhibited. it's really quite an extraordinary exhibition. want to just two brief comments about memorial day weekend here at the museum and memorial. two things to say. during that weekend we have an 80% scale replicate of the vietnam war nearly 400 feet long on the south lawn open throughout the weekend from friday through monday. so we invite you to bring your friends to the. and also on memorial day itself on the 25th, 10 a.m. is our primary ceremony, and the museum on that day on monday will be open without charge. so we invite you to be a part of that. check out the website, for a full is in fact more than 20 activities during the memorial day weekend. ladies and gentlemen, please join me again and thinking diana preston for deeply engaging presentation. you will hear person on npr, i watched out for her on c-span. thank you diana. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> on twitter and facebook are and we want to hear from you. tweet us, twitter.com/booktv or post a comment on our facebook page facebook.com/booktv. >> back in the states in august you know as they do in this story, in my mid '20s, late 20s, why do you want to do this? it might be funny. things have changed but i think i was looking for funny. i thought it might be funny to stick into the billy it might be funny to hang out with him for your body type to throw out democracy. he was calling himself bin laden. and so we called him up. and said can we spent a year with you while you overthrow the attempt over the democracy? he said okay. we went to his house and on the first day, the first thing we did was watch the lion king because it's the only can relax the he said they call me a line from the great warrior because i'm a fighter. and then ended to get election box perhaps we went to the local wholesale warehouse and on the collection box that can start with these giant novelty plastic coca-cola bottles ago i