The Cabinet, however, had decided that he alone should be attached to the delegation in an official capacity. And it was not until the afternoon of the day upon which it made this decision that it recognized the necessity of adding M. Pincan, the very able director of the Oil and Petrol Department of the Ministry of Commerce, on account of the fact that M. Eynac for over a year had been out of touch with his former colleagues.
The French delegation adopted the Belgian point of view upon the restitution of private property, and energetically defended French pre-War interests in Russian oil, which, in December 1920, represented a value of 200 million francs. A common policy was elaborated in conjunction with the principal Belgian oil companies, whose importance in the Caucasus equalled our own, with a view to the defence of rights acquired before and after the nationalization of mines and factories by the Soviets. In order to obtain absolute equality of treatment for French interests in the Caucasus, M. Laurent Eynac very pointedly called the British Government's attention to the stipulations of the San Remo Agreement. He relied upon Article 2 of the Agreement, based upon the principle of cordial co-operation and reciprocity in all countries where the oil interests of France and Britain can in practice be combined, and upon Article 6, which runs thus:
In the territories which belonged to the late Russian Empire the two Governments will give their joint support to their respective nationals in their joint efforts to obtain petroleum concessions and facilities to export and to arrange delivery of petroleum supplies.
The British Government, anxious not to obstruct the private negotiations of the Royal Dutch-Shell and the Soviets, got out of the difficulty very skilfully by giving to this latter clause a restricted interpretation. On May 15, 1922, in the House of Commons, Mr. Chamberlain went so far as to declare that Article 6 and the other analogous provisions of the San Remo Agreement would only become effective if French and British nationals decided jointly to acquire specific concessions. Nationals of a single country, like the British trusts, would therefore retain complete liberty of action.
If, in the light of these explanations, one appreciates the threat of monopoly contained in the insertion, at the instance of the British delegation, of Clause 7 in the Memorandum of May 2, 1922, stipulating that in cases where the exploitation of property formerly belonging to foreigners could be assured only by incorporating them in a general group, the preferential right to the restitution of the property should not apply, one is driven to wonder what in such circumstances has become of the cordial "Franco-British co-operation" spoken of in the San Remo preamble. Would it not be merely an empty formula?
For a long time past, the Royal Dutch-Shell had been striving to obtain a grasp of the oil deposits in Russia, and thus to realize, by arrangement with the British Government, its dream of world hegemony in oil. Its only reason for not amalgamating with the Anglo-Persian and the Burmah Oil at the beginning of 1922 was fear of American reprisals. The question was much debated, but after considerable hesitation Mr. Lloyd George refused to give his consent; so soon after the Naval Pact of Washington it would have caused something approaching a sensation in the United States and would have appeared intentionally provocative.
As soon as Britain had signed the trade agreement with Moscow, the Royal Dutch opened negotiations with the Soviet representatives, and it was not long before these relations bore fruit in the sale of 10,000 tons of oil to the Asiatic Petroleum, one of the Royal Dutch-Shell subsidiaries.
I may mention here that the signatories on behalf of the co-operatives of Russian producers were Krassin, Rakovsky, Mrs. Varvara Polovtsef, Victor Nogin, and Basil Krysin. The notorious agreement between the Shell and the Soviets, which agitated the Press of the whole world and produced a scandal which almost wrecked the Conference, was not concluded at Genoa; it was drafted in London during February in the following form:—