CHAPTER VIII

THE WAR AND OIL

The War which has just ravaged the world, proved that the country which controls oil will one day control the earth. It is just as Elliot Alves predicted: "Armies, navies, money, even entire populations, will count as nothing against the lack of oil." That the Allies have won this War is in great part due to the two greatest trusts, the _Standard Oil_ and the _Royal Dutch-Shell_, which placed themselves at the service of the Entente. Germany, hemmed in on all sides, saw her last resources disappear when the Eastern front broke up.

Without petrol for lorries, tractors, motor-cars, aeroplanes--without heavy oil for ships' boilers and factory engines--without lubricating oil for all machinery, how was it possible to carry out the combined movements of armies? It was not until about 1916 that people began to say this War would be a "war of oil." The army staffs first grasped its real utility during the defence of Verdun, situated at the end of a wretched railway with a single line of metals. The destruction of many railway lines and the inadequacy of the system behind the front led the generals to transport their troops more and more frequently by motor-lorry. It might be said that this War was the victory of the lorry over the railway. The last phase, in particular, consisted in a campaign of motors and aeroplanes against railways. Rich in railway materials, our enemies were poor in petrol. Our High Command, at the end of 1918, resolved to profit by our superiority on this point.

Before the War, Germany imported 1,263,000 tons of oil:

719,000 from the United States; 220,000 from Galicia; 158,000 from Russia; 114,000 from Rumania; 52,000 from India.

From the very beginning of hostilities nearly all these sources were closed to her. That is why the German General Staff fought so hard for Galicia, then for Rumania, and finally for the Caucasus.

"As Austria could not supply us with sufficient oil," wrote Ludendorff in his _Memoirs_, "and as all our efforts to increase production were unavailing, Rumanian oil was of decisive importance to us. But even with deliveries of Rumanian oil, the question of oil supplies still remained very serious, and caused us great difficulty, not only for the conduct of the War, but for the life of the country. The stocks of the Caucasus opened a more favourable prospect for us in 1918."

"The eastward march of the central empires is thus explained as due to the urgent need for the conquest of oil. The treaty of Bukarest was an 'oil peace,' as also was that of Brest Litovsk.

"In Rumania, Germany seized all the oil-deposits, all the refineries, all the pipe-lines, and altered and reorganized them according to the immediate needs of her armies. For the benefit of her dependent company, the _Steaua Romana_, she plundered all the properties of the British, Dutch, French, or purely Rumanian companies.

"It was then that she destroyed the Baïkop-Constantza pipe-line and relaid the pipes on a military route from Ploesti to Giurgiu. It was then that the economic staff of her army founded in 1917-18 the _Erdol Industrie Anlagen Gesellschaft_, which sequestrated, liquidated, despoiled all the other oil companies and collected the booty for its own profit in a vast monopoly of exploitation and distribution. This monopoly was only broken in August 1918, by the double victories of the Allies on the Eastern and Western fronts."[14]

When the Eastern front gave way, Germany's resources vanished. She had left only her benzol, a little heavy oil, and no lubricating oil. She had to give benzol to her airmen instead of petrol, although knowing perfectly well that their machines would thereby lose greatly in power. Her motor-lorries were not in use during calm periods; Ludendorff kept them for critical moments. And the scarcity of oil was so serious in the interior of Germany that the peasants passed the long winter evenings in darkness.

The Allies, also, lived through some tragic moments.

The year 1917 was the most terrible for them. Their armies almost ran short of petrol, their navies of heavy oils. Now, their armies consumed a million tons of petrol a year, their navies eight million tons of heavy oils. The stocks were reduced to such a point that, in May 1917 the Grand Fleet had to give up its training cruises and battle exercises, for the German submarines made a special point of attacking tankers coming from America or Asia. In France and Italy, the use of oil and even petrol was severely restricted.

In December 1917, when the cartel of the ten French refiners, which had undertaken to supply the French armies, recognized that it was powerless, and had to admit in an official letter that its stocks would be exhausted in March 1918, on the eve of the spring campaign, M. Clemenceau sent a despairing appeal to President Wilson. The representative of the Commander-in-Chief had pointed out that France did not possess in its storage depots sufficient reserves to last more than _three days_ in a situation like that of Verdun.

Here is the text of the historic telegram: "At the decisive moment of this War, when the year 1918 will see military operations of the first importance begun on the French front, the French army must not be exposed for a single moment to a scarcity of the petrol necessary for its motor-lorries, aeroplanes, and the transport of its artillery.

"A failure in the supply of petrol would cause the immediate paralysis of our armies, and _might compel us to a peace unfavourable to the Allies_. Now the minimum stock of petrol computed for the French armies by their Commander-in-Chief must be 44,000 tons and the monthly consumption is 30,000 tons. This indispensable stock has fallen to-day to 28,000 tons and threatens to fall almost to nothing if immediate and exceptional measures are not undertaken and carried out by the United States.

"These measures can and must be undertaken without a day's delay for the common safety of the Allies, the essential condition being that President Wilson shall obtain permanently from the American oil companies tank steamers with a supplementary tonnage of 100,000 tons. This is essential for the French army and population. These tank-steamers exist. They are sailing at this moment _in the Pacific instead of the Atlantic Ocean_. Some of them may be obtained from the fleet of new tankers under construction in the United States.

"President Clemenceau personally requests President Wilson to give the necessary Government authority _for the immediate dispatch to French ports of these steamers_.

"The safety of the Allied nations is in the balance. If the Allies do not wish to lose the War, then, at the moment of the great German offensive, they must not let France lack the petrol which is as necessary as blood in the battles of to-morrow."

To "harness the _Standard Oil_ to the victorious chariot of the Entente," to use the expression of Mr. Page, nothing less was necessary than the official intervention of the United States Government. The _Standard_ preferred to compete with the _Royal Dutch_ in the Pacific.

Wilson put an end to this state of affairs and the Petroleum War Board immediately placed all the necessary boats at the disposal of France. Thanks to the reserves thus built up, Foch, at the time of the great German push in Picardy, was able to bring up heavy reinforcements by motor-lorries and fill the gaps where the British front had been broken. Marshal Foch was able to execute his strategic surprises only by relying on the 92,000 motor-lorries and the 50,000 tons of petrol a month, which the Government placed at his disposal from March to November, 1918.

The Allied Governments had already decided to pool their resources, and had set up the Inter-Allied Petroleum Conference, a central body whose task was to supply them all.

It was constituted as follows:

1. Sir John Cadman, Kembal Cook, Ashdown and Graham, representing the British Petroleum Executive.

2. Captain Foley and L.J. Thomas, representing the American Petroleum War Board.

3. Professor Bordas, Controller-General of the French Technical Services, and head of the laboratories of the Ministry of Finance; Henry Bérenger, Lieutenant Georges Bénard, and the Marquis de Chasseloup-Laubat, representing the French General Petroleum Commission.

4. Captain Pozzo and Lieutenant Farina, representing the Italian Commission on Mineral Oils.

The Chairman was Sir John Cadman, a former professor in the University of Birmingham, who has played so important a part in British policy during the last few years.

The Inter-Allied Petroleum Conference had a gigantic task to face. During the last eighteen months of the War, it had to procure twelve or thirteen million tons of oil. It succeeded because it was able to guarantee the co-operation of the _Royal Dutch_ and the _Standard Oil_ in the cause of the Entente. It ordered the two trusts to supply each country from the nearest producing country. This was a great sacrifice for them, as it obliged each trust to refrain from fighting in the territory of the other. It arranged for the transport of oil in the double bottoms of British ships; 1,280 ships were adapted in this way, being equivalent to a hundred new tank-steamers. And it hurried on the construction of tank-steamers in Great Britain and the United States; 600,000 tons were built in America and 400,000 in Great Britain. _During hostilities the Americans tripled their oil fleet._

Its efforts were so successful that, on March 28, 1918, at the height of Ludendorff's offensive, the President of the French General Petroleum Commission was able to write to the Prime Minister:

"France has at her disposal for the battle 170,526 tons of petrol and 67,000 tons of other oils, instead of the 44,000 tons asked for."

"Thanks to the Inter-Allied Petroleum Conference," as M. Henry Bérenger remarked, "never, at any moment, have our soldiers lacked a drop of this spirit which gives them the necessary means of rapid movement and of cornering and defeating the enemy. If hostilities had lasted only a few more days, our victorious troops would have taken, in the Ardennes, whole armies whose line of retreat was becoming so congested that they must have fallen into our hands without resistance. Hence the Germans hastily accepted the conditions which were imposed upon them, without either hesitation or discussion." (December 7, 1918.)

This time, the military and political importance of oil was apparent to every eye. On the morrow of the Armistice (November 21, 1918), it was celebrated in enthusiastic speeches. And Lord Curzon was able to declare, at Lancaster House, "Truly posterity will say that the Allies floated to victory on a wave of oil."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 14: H. Bérenger: _La Politique du Pétrole_, 1920.]