[version_five]

I agree with you, but also reject that premise that there was such thing as a "war crime" then. There was no Geneva Convention (or TIL Hague convention) at that time, and society was completely different. This is just another part of the idiotic pattern of judging past actions by today's morals (which is most ironic because the kind of people pushing this would have been at the front of the line on enforcing whatever the orthodoxy of their day was).

[krapp]

As the article points out, the use of poison in warfare was against the morals (and accepted rules of combat) of the time and the specific poisoning described in the article was denounced at the time as well.