But the struggle between Britain and the United States was not long in breaking out again with renewed intensity, this time for the conquest of the remaining oil lands, now escheat, from the Caucasus to the Urals and Turkestan. The Genoa Conference will be regarded by history, not so much as a great effort towards world peace, as a "Conference on Oil," at which the immense riches of the old Tsarist Empire were offered by Tchitcherin to the appetites of the Powers. I have developed this point in the preface to the Russian edition of this book, which has recently been translated under the direction of M. Melik-Noubaroff, formerly President of the Imperial Technical Commission of Baku and chief engineer of the Nobel Company: "Though Russia, which held first place in the world's production for a few years at the beginning of the twentieth century, has now dropped back to third place, the reserves contained in her soil still exceed 1,000 million cubic metres, almost equalling those of the United States and Alaska together (1,113 million cubic metres). Persia and Mesopotamia, Mexico itself, as well as the north of South America, rank after her. All other countries are far behind. The time will come, perhaps in less than twenty years (exceptional circumstances apart) in view of the terrific rate of consumption, when the reserves of the United States will be exhausted; then Russia will play a big part in the world." The developed areas throughout Russia, Siberia, and the Caucasus are much smaller than the extent of the proved deposits, which themselves are but a small fraction of those whose existence has been indicated with certainty by preliminary surveys. The oil resources of Russia represent alone _one-sixth of the reserves of the world_. Hence the greed and covetousness with which they were regarded at Genoa. The question of oil is the primary political question of the present age, but in this Conference at which the future of Europe was to be enacted, France was the only nation which seemed not to notice the fact. The Quai d'Orsay had not deigned to appoint a single oil expert to Genoa.[38] More than that, I am in a position to state that the only one of the French delegates who was acquainted with the oil question had received precise instructions before his departure to keep strictly aloof from all discussions about oil. It was, of course, manifestly impossible to expect to settle the question of Russia's oil at Genoa in the absence of any representative of the United States. The French delegation therefore held only a watching brief.