Oil

La Quotidienne, Who in the public suspects this?

At the end of December 1917, France was on the verge of losing the war; she was then on the eve of being crushed, not for lack of combatants and ammunition, but because she was going to run out of oil. The situation could become desperate overnight; it was then that M. Clemenceau took it upon himself to transmit to President Wilson an urgent appeal, the testimony of which remains in the form of a telegram preserved in the archives.

The United States having mobilized a whole fleet of "tanker" ships, the precious product was able to arrive in time to supply the immense material formed for our thousands of trucks, necessary for the transport of troops and supplies.

These memories of a particularly tragic phase of the war were evoked at the last luncheon of the "Comité Dupleix", by M. Stiénon, one of the men who know best, at this hour, the serious question of oil. Commenting on these facts, too generally ignored, he showed the present dangerous situation of France and Belgium, whose supply of liquid fuel now depends on the Anglo-Saxons. It must not be concealed that this situation constitutes a threat to the independence of the two countries, and also of a few others, who find themselves in the same situation as ourselves.

“Oil,” Mr. Stienon said in substance, “dominates our military situation, both on land and at sea; the Franco-Belgian army could be immobilized by an occult agreement between the Anglo-Saxons, who now control the main sources of liquid fuel. At the moment the squadrons already use and will use more and more fuel oil this gives them, over the squadrons which will remain coal-fired, a superiority comparable to that of the steam navy over the sailing navy. With the aid of several trusts, the capital of which amounts to billions of francs, England is in a position to impose on us, sooner or later, her views on the international order. »

The seriousness of such a state of affairs cannot escape anyone and cannot leave any Frenchman indifferent. Our politicians, those who are in charge of the destinies of France, must, obviously, be concerned about it and seek ways to remedy it. Anglo-Saxon imperialism is more surely ensured and maintained by oil than by the power of arms; the result is that the other nations find themselves doomed, in a way, to a humiliating vassalage.

Taking the floor in his turn, Mr. Gabriel Bonvalot, the eminent president of the "Dupleix Committee", recalled that, on December 12, 1919, a diplomatic note, communicated to our negotiators of the peace treaty, contained this sentence: "Who will have oil will have empire: the empire of the seas by heavy oils, the empire of the skies by light gasolines, the empire of the continents by gasolines and kerosene, the empire of the world by financial power attached to a material more precious, more enveloping, more dominating of the planet than gold itself”.

The rapidity with which events are proceeding causes the men of our generalion to begin to see the results of this prediction.

PAUL-HYEX.