"The Red God Laughed" by Thorp McClusky

Published in 1936. It was probably fairly obvious by 1936 that another war was probable, and with memories of WW1 still fresh enough in the minds of many, this story is quite the plea, eh?

4000 feet = ~1200 meters

a quarter of a mile = 400 meters

The picture used is the illustration by Virgil Finlay for the story as published in Weird Tales

Also, wheeee! for the early period of modern astronomy!

To follow along: https://archive.org/details/wt_1939_04/page/n5/mode/2up

Well, it appears the book I'm reading from has been edited from the original 1936 edition. As you can see in the link above, the gas attack was launched by "yellow" men, i.e. Asians, a detail my edition leaves out, and thus is not in this recording. There are other minor changes in the text to tighten up the wording and make things a little more clear and/or concise, which makes me think it was McClusky who made these changes, rather than the editor of my edition. The story was republished several times in his lifetime, so that is very likely.