demand for a written waiver of all protest against future petroleum legislation. The second form of support which the Mexican governments obtained is more recent, and more complicated. Under the Carranza decrees oil lands were open to “denouncement” (or filing of claims) and the taking out of a “denouncement” even to protect one’s own property was taken as an unqualified recognition of the right of Mexico in confiscating the oil rights of that property. The American and British companies united in an agreement not to denounce their own lands and not to buy or lease denouncements upon any other lands. In 1919, some new American interests, which had had other experience in oil, entered the Mexican field. They spent some $500,000 in looking up titles to the properties and leases held by the old companies. They found many defects, for the inheritance laws, the poor records and the negligible value of the properties as farm lands make questionable titles the commonplace of the oil game in Mexico. Where there was an apparently defective title, these interests acquired the outstanding lien, and so laid claim to some of the finest producing lots. So far the plan was a not unexpected move toward getting a hand in the oil game, a chance to sit in with big stakes alongside the big companies. The new elements, however, next “denounced” their new claims before the Carranza government, thus placing themselves quite outside the old-crowd oil camp. This “denouncing” of their properties brought them many favors from Carranza officials, but it made negotiation with the old companies difficult. The Mexican oil problem, in its simplest, is three-fold. It has to do, first, with the nationalization of the petroleum in the subsoil, which threatens to wipe out vested property; second, with the question of taxation, which may at any time, and indeed actually threatens to become confiscatory; third, with the problem of concessions which are to-day the most obvious form of political graft and to-morrow may precipitate a Mexican war over petroleum rights.