-THE ADMIRALTY AND THE OIL OF ASIA.
To complete the illusion, the British Government (which assisted them in secret) all of a sudden simulated fear of their excessive growth. The Admiralty dropped a discreet hint to the House of Commons that, since oil had become indispensable for its dreadnoughts, it was important to free the navy from the tutelage of international trusts. It was voted the money required to obtain an interest in the operations of the Burmah Oil Company, which was exploit ing petroleum in Burma, and later it provided half the capital of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, which had secured the monopoly for thirty years of all the oil fields of Persia.
Meanwhile, the Germans had discovered rich deposits of oil among the hills in the upper valley of the Tigris. Here was an excellent reason for demanding that this region should be placed under British influence. For had not Lord Curzon declared that Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf formed a natural dependency of India ? But the Germans, supported first by Abdul Hamid and later by the Young Turks, had obtained a concession for a branch from their Bagdad railway, which was to approach the oil-bearing lands by way of Hanikin. Unquestionably, this oil field helped considerably to embitter the dispute which had arisen over the famous Bagdad railway between Germany on the one side and the British, French, and Russians on the other.
At the beginning of 1914 the conflict seemed to abate. This was the time when Sir Ernest Cassel, the little Frank furt Jew, who had become one of the kings of British finance, was striving to avert the world War which threatened by bringing British, German, and even French interests into association everywhere possible. An agree ment was arrived at : all the Mosul oil fields were to be conceded to a firm called the Turkish Petroleum Company ; the capital was to be provided in part by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, in part by the Royal Dutch, and by the Germans ; the product was to be shared according to an agreed scale. It seemed that, upon this question at least, a peaceful settlement had been reached, when at that very moment war broke out.
In short, up to 1914, the British Government appeared to be completely uninterested in the development of the Shell Transport, and anxious rather to protect itself against that company. But, upon the pretext of safeguarding its reserves, it seized possession of oil fields which the company had not touched ; and thus, while seeming to combat its over-great extension, it actually completed it