Excerpt from The Shell: That Hit Germany Hardest

HE future of civilised life both in peace and war is going to depend more and more upon the practical application of science to men's everyday needs. The two branches of science most needful for this are chemistry and mechanics. And in this evolution, oil and its products are going to play an ever-increasing part.

Take locomotives as an instance. Up to 184o - only 80 years ago - animal-drawn vehicles were the only means of fast (12 - as it was considered then progression. Then came railways, and with railways came the coal and steam age, which lasted unbroken until about 1890, when oil and gas in various forms began to make inroads upon the until then unchallenged position of coal and steam combined as the only prime mover.

And it is interesting to reflect that if it were not for the discovery and use of oil and oil products, probably at least one quarter of the machinery to-day producing power would be using coal instead of these forms of power production, and the national output of coal, especially at its now reduced figure, would be unable to sustain the burden, with the result that coal would now be costing over £5 a ton, with all the evils attendant upon such high prices.

Coal has now a serious rival in oil, and in my opinion during the next 20 or 30 years the declining monopoly of coal as our only large source of power will be further shattered by the use of oil. And though I am not dis cussing national politics or economics, I would say that the power of those who own, produce, transport andsell coal, over the rest of the community, will be thus gradually reduced.

Oil and water, two forms of white coal, are already in many places the consumer's remedy against high prices of coal, and it is interesting to observe in the development of the world that nature, if you look into her secrets deeply enough, will always give you some alternative method of producing what humanity is in need of.

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