the government monopoly company with a large debt upon which it
would have been required to pay interest, and this interest, of
course, would have been added to the cost of oil to the German
consumers. In my final conversation on the subject with von
Bethmann-Hollweg, he said, "You don't mean to say that President
Wilson and Secretary Bryan will do anything for the Standard
Oil Company?" I answered that everyone in America knew that
the Standard Oil Company had neither influence with nor control
over President Wilson and Secretary Bryan, but that they both
could and would give the Standard Oil Company the same measure
of protection which any American citizen doing business abroad
had a right to expect from his government. I also said that I
thought they had done enough for the Germans interested in the
Galician and Roumanian oil fields when they had used the Prussian
state railways to give these oil producers an unfair advantage
over those importing American oil.

Shortly after this the question of the creation of this oil monopoly
was dropped and naturally has not been revived during the war,
and I very much doubt whether, after the war, the people of
liberalised Germany will consent to pay more for inferior oil in
order to make good the investments of certain German banks and
financiers in Galicia and Roumania. I doubt whether a more liberal
Germany will wish to put the control of a great business in the
hands of the government, thereby greatly increasing the number
of government officials and the weight of government influence
in the country. Heaven knows there are officials enough to-day
in Germany, without turning over a great department of private
industry to the government for the sole purpose of making good
bad investments of certain financiers and adding to the political