"The Alves group (_British Controlled Oil-fields_) whose properties extend two-thirds round the Caribbean Sea is entirely British; and the regulations controlling it ensure the absolute perpetuity of direction in the interests of Great Britain. No citizen, no American group, has attained, or will ever attain, in Central America a position ... like that of Mr. Alves. If we consider the greatest of all petroleum organizations, the _Shell_ group, it possesses or controls undertakings in every oil-producing country of the world, including the United States, Russia, Mexico, the Dutch Indies, Rumania, Egypt, Venezuela, Trinidad, India, Ceylon, the Malay States, China, Siam, the Straits Settlements and the Philippines. "No doubt we shall have to wait some years before the benefits of this position can be reaped; but there is no doubt that the harvest will be magnificent. Before long America will be obliged to buy from British companies, at the rate of millions of pounds every year and to pay in dollars, in increasing quantities the oil she cannot do without, and which she can no longer obtain from her own reserves. "I estimate that if their consumption continues to increase at the present rate, in _ten years the Americans will be obliged to import 500 million barrels_, which, at the very low price of two dollars a barrel, means an annual paying out of a thousand million dollars, of which the greater part will fall into British pockets. With the exception of Mexico and a small part of Central America, _the whole world is solidly barricaded against an attack in force by the United States_. The British position is impregnable." One year after the peace the struggle between Great Britain and America reached its bitterest phase. The United States wished to obtain, at any price, part of the oil deposits of Mesopotamia and of the new oil-bearing territory which had just been discovered at Djambi in the Sunda Islands. Consequently, on November 20, 1920, Mr. Colby, Secretary of State, addressed a Note to Lord Curzon, which the American Press published on the 24th, in which he protested against the exclusion of Americans from Mesopotamia and claimed equality of treatment for all nations.