Article 27, perhaps they might accept a little higher taxation, perhaps they would like a few concessions, perhaps they might be counted on to get the hopefully predicted Mexican loan. All this is the last phase of the complicated problem. We have said, in days gone by, that this is the problem of the oil companies, that theirs is the gain and theirs should be the cost. But if I have succeeded here I have conveyed an idea of the breadth of the oil problem. It is no longer a question of whether the American State Department is making the proper moves to support honest and industrious American investors and workers abroad. It is no longer the academic problem of whether the oil companies are handling their business in an intelligent and efficient manner. The problem is ours, yours and mine, of you in Kansas, of me in New York, of our cousins in England and China. It is the problem of the chap who runs a Ford and of the man who is cutting our freight bills by renting us a truck, of the steamship company which is carrying our goods, of the captain of the battleship which keeps us safe from near and distant enemies. The problem is not merely whether the white peoples of the world are to have the right to develop the riches of the backward nations for the benefit of the world, but of _how_ they are to do it. So far, even in forward-looking lands, it has been impossible to eliminate private ownership and colossal private fortunes from the wheel of oil production; in Mexico, to-day, it would be disaster beyond understanding to turn the right of concession and oil privileges over to corrupt and inept government. The battle of the oil companies in Mexico is to save, first themselves from such a fate, and second to save all the unopened oil resources in the world from the strangling hold of such governments and such peoples everywhere. The oil industry can no longer carry the burden of such conditions, for the prices of your gasoline and your ship’s fuel oil are reflections not of a world scarcity, but of the uncertainty, the colossal artificial difficulties of oil production in the backward lands. Commerce has fashioned the world into one brotherhood, and the Great War, for all its appearances, has welded us all into a mightier machine of civilization than history has ever known. Oil is the fuel of that machine, and oil must come to its engine, though all the power of politicians and bandits combine to keep it in the soil. The backward countries are swept into the forefront of commercial importance when oil begins to flow from their soil. The process is going on all over the world. In Mexico it is at its zenith. The oil must come, and from Mexico before all others, for Mexico lies in the heart of the world, her shores touched by more waters in proportion to her area than any other continental nation. And her stores of oil are the greatest man has yet found or dreamed of.