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.] CHAPTER IX AN IMPERIALISM NOT WITHOUT GREATNESS If the trusts were powerful before the War, they are much more so to-day, assisted as they have been by the fantastic rise of the dollar and the pound and the unheard-of prices at which they were able to sell oil during the great conflict. The _Europeanische Petroleum Union_ has fallen to pieces; therefore they have no longer to fear a third rival. _The_ Royal Dutch _and the_ Standard Oil, _by helping the Allies, have also served their own interests_.