Ten years ago, Britain possessed no oil, to-day she is independent, to-morrow she will be mistress. The feat has been accomplished by the silent efforts of a few men such as Sir Marcus Samuel, chairman of the Shell, Lord Cowdray (Pearson), Lord Curzon, formerly Viceroy of India, Sir John Cadman, technical adviser to the British Government, Professor in the University of Birmingham, and Chairman of the Inter-Allied Petroleum Conference during the War, Lord Strathcona, creator of the Canadian railways, who played a great part in the Anglo-Persian, and, above all, Admiral Lord Fisher.
These men acted even without the knowledge of the British people and its parliamentary representatives. Their fellow-countrymen and their opponents only heard of their activities when they had endowed their country with a world-wide oil empire.
There was veritable amazement in the House of Commons when it was informed of what Lord Fisher and Lord Strathcona had done with the Anglo-Persian. Their work narrowly escaped undoing. Lord Fisher himself described, in September 1919, the opposition he met with, even among his colleagues. "I was dubbed 'an oil maniac' when I was at the Admiralty in 1885. Lord Ripon, the First Lord, sent for me and told me I was called a Radical enthusiast and nicknamed 'Gambetta,' and said he meant to make me a member of the Board of Admiralty. I told him all the rest of the Board would leave. He saw me a week after and confessed it was so; but, thank God! I was spared to be Director of Naval Ordnance instead."
Lord Fisher experienced the same difficulties when he wished to equip the British Navy with submarines. It is to him, and to the Bethlehem Steel Works (United States), that the Allies owed the prompt completion of the special type of submarines which "went, unconvoyed from America to the Dardanelles and acted there prodigiously." A few of these submarines which succeeded in passing through the wire nets of Chanak-Nagara, for a long time controlled the Sea of Marmora and prevented the Turks from taking supplies by sea to their fortifications on the Straits. Oil supremacy and naval supremacy go hand-in-hand. When he wished to give his country empire over oil, Lord Fisher's principal object was to preserve her dominion over the seas. For that fleet will be victorious which has at its disposal the most abundant sources of oil. Ships using oil have driven out those burning coal, just as the latter replaced sailing ships.
When we compare the results obtained by France and by Britain, on whose soil it seems that no deposits of mineral oil have yet been discovered (a fact which rendered Lord Fisher's task none the easier); and when we see Britain mistress of nearly all the oil remaining in the world, we stand confounded with admiration before the genius of those to whom she owes such an empire.
British Oil Policy
Having been obliged to allow the first place to America, the country which first discovered oil, and which until recently produced 70 per cent. of the world's output, Great Britain began to gain upon her by keeping command of oil-carrying ships. Whoever transports a commodity controls it, and is master of it up to a certain point, for he is the indispensable intermediary for those who wish to obtain it. Should any difficulty arise, the transporter, according as he fulfils his office or not, grants or withholds supplies for the markets, as he pleases. The British genius has always sought to compensate, by maritime superiority, for the inferiority of Great Britain in certain respects. If the United States occupied the first place among producers of oil, they ranked second to Great Britain as transporters. Great Britain, understanding that oil "is destined to play the same part in the world as coal, cotton or steel," made a special point of retaining control of oil-carrying ships. It was a thrilling duel.
The world tonnage of tank-steamers rose by June 30, 1919, to 2,616,000, tons, of which 1,500,000 tons sailed under the British flag, 1,000,000 tons under the American. In June, 1920, the United States had gained the first position. They had 308 tank-steamers, amounting to 1,734,843 tons, or 51 per cent. of the whole (3,386,091 tons). On January 1, 1921, the supremacy of Great Britain was restored. Of the 524 oil-steamers afloat, 252 belonged to her, the United States having only 191. But she lost this position again six months later.