France is paying for her past inertia. If the Allies have to thank the two great trusts for enabling them to get their supplies of oil during the War, the latter in return have notably increased their power. The defeat of the Central Empires has brought about the ruin of their rival, the _Europeanische Petroleum Union_, and the destruction of the network of interests which Germany had succeeded in spreading over Galicia, Rumania, Russia, and Turkey. The ambition of the _Royal Dutch_ since it linked its fortunes with those of the British Empire knows no bounds. Its latest success at Djambi has now spurred it to ask the Netherlands Government for a monopoly of exploitation in all the Sunda Islands. It has almost reached the point of eliminating its American rival completely from the Far East. The _Standard_ retaliates, and sends prospectors wherever they are admitted--to Abyssinia (January 1921), Peru, Colombia, the Philippines, Bolivia. It has gained a footing in the Azores, and in July 1922 was trying in Ecuador to acquire control of the _Lobitos_ from the _Anglo-Ecuadorian_. It is actively cultivating the Government of Czecho-Slovakia for the grant of exclusive rights of exploitation, and it has obtained from the Italian Government a concession for the oil deposits of San Saba, near Trieste. But the Chinese Government has refused the permanent agreement which it proposed. Walter Teagle wishes the _Standard_, like the _Royal Dutch-Shell_, to become a producer of oil and not to content itself with the mere control of refining and distribution. But the time is long past when Rockefeller controlled 95 per cent. of the sales of oil in the United States. Although the _Standard's_ capital has risen to $1,310,000,000 and the number of its subsidiaries to 62 it now refines only 49 per cent. of American oil. In the United States there are forty-four independent companies, representing a capital of two thousand million dollars, which carry on, not only the extraction, but also the transport, refining, and sale of oil. Still more serious, the Anglo-Dutch trust has succeeded in establishing itself on the territory of the Union itself; at a recent congress of the American Petroleum Institute, Walter Teagle showed that the _Royal Dutch-Shell_ drew 43 per cent. of its total production from the United States. Be that as it may, the _Standard_, in America, is always regarded as the great national champion, upon which falls the task of fighting the _Royal Dutch_ and the British Empire, which have laid plans for depriving the United States of their supremacy in oil. _Who attacks the_ Standard _attacks the Washington Government directly_. And in Europe it still occupies a strong position through its various subsidiary companies. _The struggle for oil is no longer a rivalry between great trusts; it is a struggle between nations._ FOOTNOTES: