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Show VU kt DREW PEARSON MM It.' I- u Washington, D C. U. S.-BRITISH OIL ACCORD This column, it should be noted in idvance, is likely to be dull. But if. rou are interested in keeping your i son or husband out of another war, It should be important. The United States and Great Brit-Jin Brit-Jin are just concluding the first ! agreement aimed to remove the Sanger ol war an agreement on oil. Oil is one of the most ticklish economic eco-nomic subjects in the world. Oil is what makes a nation's battleships ' move, runs the automobiles, sends the planes into the air in fact, spells the difference between a nation of strength or a nation which 'must , Dow to the whims of others. The present oil agreement seeks to settle set-tle the battle for oil; eliminate one important cause of war. The last war was scarcely over when Great Britain began maneuvering maneu-vering to corner the oil supplies of the world. British leaders were quite frank about it. United States Protests. Finding itself in this position, the United States government jumped Into the battle for oil with vigor. The secretary of state, Charles Evans j Hughes, wrote a series of blunt, bare-faced notes to the British, wanting want-ing to know why they barred American Ameri-can oil companies from Palestine, since Palestine was not British but merely mandated to the British by the League. Meanwhile, the British, though barring the U. S. from their areas of interest, quietly Invaded ours. They turned .up with concessions in Colombia, not far from the Panama Canal. Even in Panama proper, a British eold-minine comDanv staked out a huge and suspicious claim in an area where no gold was known to exist. History Begins to Repeat. In World War II, history at first began to repeat. The five senators who toured the world war fronts came back with the story of how the U.S.A. was rapidly depleting her oil reserves while the British were hoarding theirs. They told how the British were trying to keep us from further developing oil resources in Arabia; how the British had a refinery re-finery on the Gulf of Persia, 50 per cent idle, while we shipped oil clear across the Atlantic to British armies in the Near East. Yes, it looked as if history woull repeat. On last April 29, however, representatives rep-resentatives of the British and American governments negotiated negotiat-ed an informal understanding 'limed to eliminate the oil battles bat-tles of the future. It was an excellent, ex-cellent, far-sighted agreement. And during the last two weeks in Washington, Lord Beaverbrook and his associates have been negotiating ne-gotiating with Secretaries Ickes and Hull to make this informal oil agreement formal and binding. bind-ing. This time, the British have been far more cooperative and far-sighted than in 1919 with one possible exception. After U. S. -British experts laid their excellent April 29 ground work, Lord Beaverbrook kicked over the traces at some things, and he seems to be keeping a more watchful eye on the interests inter-ests of the empire than on a fair future peace. For instance, he has been insisting that Britain Brit-ain have the right to ban the sale of V. S. oil in England, despite de-spite the fact that British Shell sells in this country. However, the basic agreement is truly encouraging en-couraging when it comes to future fu-ture peace. Provisions of Agreement. It provides, first: "That petroleum shall be available in international trade to the nationals of all peace-loving peace-loving countries in adequate volume, at fair prices and on an equitable and non-discriminatory basis." This means that, if the U.S.A. runs out of oil or vice versa, it is up to Britain to help supply us unless, un-less, for example, one or the other attempts to conquer Ethiopia as Mussolini Mus-solini did, and the world peace-machinery countries attempt to cut off their oil as the League tried to do to Italy but, because of pressure from the big companies, could not do. The agreement also gives "equal opportunity" for "acquisition," "development," "de-velopment," etc., in areas under concession. con-cession. This eliminates cutthroat rivalry for new fields. Each nation is to respect the valid concessions of the other and its citizens. Finally, and very important, "exploration, "ex-ploration, development, operation of refineries and distribution shall not be hampered by restrictions imposed by either government or its nationals." nation-als." MERRY-GO-ROUND C. Cautious Mr. Turk If you want the real low-down on why the Turks finally broke with Germany, it was because Hitler had moved troops out of Bulgaria just opposite Turkey. After that, the Turks weren't afraid of being attacked. . . . With Sweden and Switzerland both closed to Hitler Hit-ler for escape, his few remaining havens are Japan which won't last long and Argentina. ... It has long been rumored that the Nazi . top men were building up cash re-terves re-terves in Argentina. |
