A perusal of the preceding chapters of this little work will have made it clear to the reader that petroleum and its products play a most important part to-day in the life of nations: if, however, one would be impressed with the immensely significant rôle which petroleum products have played in the conduct of the great European War, a brief reference to the subject will amply suffice. From the commencement of the Titanic struggle in 1914, it became obvious to those who were most competent to judge that, if victory was to be on the side of the Allies, it was imperative that they should possess sufficient reserves of petroleum products for all purposes, for it was evident then that activity would not be limited to armies on the land, but that the air and the sea would also become battle-grounds whereon the destinies of nations would in part be decided. Germany, too, saw this; before the war it had been practically dependent upon regular supplies from the United States as well as from Roumania, but the bulk of its requirements came from the former mentioned country. With its States’ oil shipments cut off, it turned its attention to securing at least part of its stocks from the neutral North-Western European countries, which, in their turn, were likewise dependent upon America. The ruse worked for some time, and the unsuspecting American exporters shipped cargoes to Denmark, Norway, and Sweden with little idea that the bulk of these were ultimately to find their way into Germany. It was only when the figures were published in the States as to the abnormally large quantities of petroleum products that had been sent to the European neutral countries that, to the thinking mind, it became obvious something was wrong. I can modestly claim to have called the attention of the British Government to this underhand proceeding early in 1915, when I not only gave them details of cargoes which had been delivered to various North-Western European ports _en route_ to Germany, but also managed to secure the names of vessels all laden with such supplies, which at that time were crossing the Atlantic. Mr. Winston Churchill, to his credit be it said, acted without delay, and within a few days, as the vessels passed the North of Scotland, they were stopped, and--well, to cut a long story short, this country got the petroleum products which, in accordance with the original plan, would have gone to Germany. Some time afterwards there came a voice of protest from one or two interested persons in those neutral countries, for they declared that not a single barrel of petroleum had gone over to Germany, but evidence was soon forthcoming to show how well Germany’s ruse had worked for some months, and a prosecution in one of those countries made against an importing firm, for actually sending petroleum supplies into Germany, effectively closed the protest from those who would have liked the enemy’s desires to have been undisturbed.