Untitled

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18321, 11 August 1921, Page 4

If there is little difference between the cost of oil and of coal to-day, it does not follow that, should the demand for oil assume the proportion anticipated, this fuel may be as economical in the future. A great deal depends upon the world’s production of it. This involves the question whether the world’s 'supplies are likely to prove equal to the inauguration of an oil age in which coal will be relegated to the background. It is said that there are abundant visible supplies ahead and that the production is increasing while now oil-fields are being continually opened out. Colombia, Ecuador, Costa Rica. Venezuela, Alaska, and NorthWestern Canada—along the Mackenzie River—are regarded as promising sources of future supply. The Admiralty has decreed that oil shall replace con! in the British navy- There seems ervery indication also that in the mercantile marine also oil is going to win the day. To Captain James Bacon of Messrs B-jß.rdrr.ore and Co. is attributed the statement:

“ Manufacturers are coming to us daily and buying oil engines. This ban indication of the iyay in which the internal combustion engine is beating steam, and I believe the process will go on until the use of coal.for the production of power almost ceases. Take the case of ships. A ship has to carry say 1000 tons of bunker coal: 100 tons of oil will do the same work, leaving space for 900 more tons of cargo. We are building nine ships for one firm alone fitted with internal combustion engines. I look forward to the time when our ships and our locomotives will all be oil-driven.” From Motor Ship comes the assertion that while probably 20 per cent, of the world’s steam shipping is idle in part because it cannot be operated at a profit, not a single large oil-engined ship is now laid up. It is just possible, -however, that in New Zealand search for such - a vessel .night be successful. It is contended by the journal from which we have quoted that the daily fuel bill of the coal-burning steamer is almost double that of the vessel fitted with oil engines.

It is not many weeks since during the strike period the coal output in the Old Country was almost negligible. Now we have a cable message citing the Cardiff correspondent of the Daily Chronicle as authority for the statement that the output lias outstripped the demand, and it is feared that there will bo a heavy slunjp in values, as well as a considerable addition to the number of miners left without employment as a consequence of the strike. The prophecy that there never will again be the old demand for British coal either at home or abroad seems to be finding somewhat early verification. If the latest .’message on the subject represents the position correctly, that is not to say that the situation may not adjust itself. The summer which tfie Old Country has been experiencing will not have been a period during which the demand for coal for household consumption was very high. But it is hot at all certain that the coal strike has not affected the demand in a way that may be permanent. Possibly the necessity of doing with less coal which was imposed on the country by the miners for some months has had an effect which they did not anticipate in the encouragement of the use of substitutes. This applies particularly to the case of industries. It may be, even as the oil enthusiasts aver, that the age of coal is passing away. The claims advanced from such a quarter may not always be strictly impartial. It is of interest, however, to find the editor of the Petroleum World credited recently with the following Statement: “ During the last few weeks the use of oil as a fuel has increased to an extraordinary extent. This is not due entirely to the coal strike; it is also due to the fact that after, the strike had been going on for three weeks the oil companies agreed to reduce their prices 70 shillings per ton. The result has been an enormous number of inquiries, not only for oil itself, but for burners to enable it to be used in furnaces' in place of coal. Oil companies are now willing to make contracts for five years ahead at about present prices, which puts the .oil consumer in a very favourable position.”

At the time when the Germans were sure of winning the war a cheap outlet provided for their elation took the form of nails into the great wooden statue of Field-Marshal von Hindenhurg, erected in Berlin’s Avenue of Victory. . Eventually, of course, they got tired of the business, and the story tells how, while two artists conducted a long struggle in the law courts regarding the honour of having first thought of the statue, the grim ungainly effigy rusted and rotted. Yet when nearly all of the war idols of Germany had fallen this one still stood, and even the'revolutionaries of 1918 had seemingly not the heart to pull it down. Father more than a year ago, however, the eyesore was quietly removed, and no questions were asked. Still this was not quite the last of the discredited idol of militarism. It had not been stolen or smuggled out of the country for the adornment. of some more triumphant capital. It recently turned up again in a form even more accessible than of yore to vhe German public, as witness an advertisement in a Berlin newspaper, which is to be translated thus—“lron Hindenhurg. For sale, whole or in parts, for firewood. Apply, etc.” Certainly the last purpose was more useful than the first. There was no rush apparently for sacred relics. Doubtless tho wooden war-god has all blazed merrily up the chimney by this time. Had some enterprising ' British showman been able to secure the idol for exhibition in England he would have brought to suitable fulfilment that great achievement of prophetic vision, ‘Hindenburg’s March on London)"’ one of the most popular books in Germany during' the war. How many million Germans must have gloated over the thrilling picture of the hero receiving the keys of the Mansion House from a quaking Lord Mayor of London! Do they still recall, we wonder, some of those purple passages depicting his - stern envisagement of “the Canaan of the German dreams of conquest.” Said the inspired author: “The God who has stood on our side during this severe war of liberation, and given us a Hindenhurg, will also lead us over the Channel. Who would then not irresistibly follow to the banks of the Thames Hindenburg’s flags, those flags accustomed to victory?” To Hindenhurg himself his admirers must surely have been often a sore trial.