There needs to be a distinction between harassing chemicals and poisonous or battlefield chemicals (gases), which is what ethyl bromoacetate, or White Cross or T-stoff was - a harassing chemical. Sure, while French troops fired these half-pound grenades at advancing German forces, this did not really have anywhere the same significance as the wide-spread, mass-release of highly poisonous chlorine that the Germans used in 1915. Also the 1899 Hague Convention dealt specifically with the use of "projectiles with the sole object to spread asphyxiating poisonous gases." I do not believe that the French lachrymatory grenades, which were fitted to special .26 cailbre rifles, fell into this category.
French attempts at harassment with chemicals played no part in Imperial Germany's decision to undertake large-scale battlefield chemical weapons deployment. Germany had the most sophisticated chemical industry in the world and people like Fritz Haber who first had the idea to use poison to dislodge enemy combatants from their entrenched positions.
However, I do take the point that France was the first to use a harassing chemical in the First World War.
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