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.