People say Internal Combustion Propulsion in a hundred thousand horse-power _Dreadnought_ is similarly impossible! “Wait and see!”--The “Non-Pareil” is coming along! The rapid development of the oil engine is best illustrated by the fact that a highly influential and rich German syndicate have arranged for six passenger steamers for the Atlantic and Pacific Trade, of 22 knots speed and 36,000 H.P. with nine of Krupp’s cylinders of 4,000 H.P. each on three shafts.[12] There need be no fear of an oil famine because of the immense sure oil areas recently brought to notice in Canada, Persia, Mesopotamia and elsewhere. The British oil area in Trinidad alone will be able to more than supply all the requirements of the British Navy. Assuming the present coal requirements of the Navy at 1½ million tons annually, then less than half a million tons of oil would suffice when the whole British Navy is oil engined, and, as recently remarked by the greatest oil magnate, this amount would be a bagatelle compared with the total output of oil, which he expects before many years to reach an output of a hundred million tons a year in consequence of the great demand for developing its output and the discovery of new oil areas and the working of shale deposits. We turned coal-burning Battleships that were building in November, 1914, into oilers, with great increase of efficiency and speed. * * * * * I have chanced upon a Memorandum on “Oil and its Fighting Attributes,” which I drew up on March 3rd, 1913, for the First Lord of the Admiralty. It shows what a Great Personality can effect. I was told by an enemy of Mr. Deterding (of whom I am speaking) that when he came in as Manager of the Great Shell Oil Combine, the Concern could have been bought for £40,000. When I wrote my Memorandum, it was valued by a hostile Oil Magnate (who told me this himself) at forty millions sterling. Whether it is Oil, or Peace, or War, it’s the Man, and not the System that Wins. And Mr. Deterding is the man who shifted the centre of gravity of oil (together with an immense assemblage of clerks and chemists and all the paraphernalia of a huge financial web) from abroad to this country. “The ideal accumulator which everybody has been after for the last 50 years, is oil. There will never be found another accumulator or source of power of such small volume as oil. “Just fancy! Get a gallon of oil and a man can go to Brighton and back again, carrying the weight of his bicycle and himself by means of it....