ROMANCE OF FUEL.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20917, 6 January 1930, Page 12

ROMANCE OF FUEL.

WAR HISTORY SECRET. On how i slender a thread hung the victory of the Allies in the Great War was disclosed by Brigadier-general Coxeu in an address to the United Service Institution on "Fuel" (reports the Sydney Moaning Herald). "National disaster could not have been averted in the spring of 1915," he eaid, had the appalling shortage of high explosives not been met promptly, when British .supplies were hopelessly inadequate." I Continuing to relate a little known romance of those" dreadful days, General Coxen said that toluol, a by-product of petrol, was a constituent of the high explosive which filled our shells. At the crisis of 1915. when the eyes of the world J'ere fpcussed upon Britain, the Dutch Shell Oil Company offered to supply her with toluol in .large quantities. It was a providential offer, eagerly accepted. The company s works were situated in neutral Holland, but one night the entire facory was clandestinely dismantled and shipped in a specially-chartered steamer, which—contrary to all regulations—left Rotterdam after dark and appeared off the English coast at dawn, escorted by British destroyers. " Had a German torpedo boat destroyer stumbled upon that steamer," said General Cosen. "the whole course of the war might conceivably have been changed. Without toluol we should have been lost. Dealing with fuels other than petrol. General Coxen said that France regarded charcoal as the national fuel, and vehicles using it were paid a subsidy and relieved of some taxation. As charcoal could be used in Australia cheaply, its use in producer pas engines for transport purposes should be exploited. Tlio time would come, he added, when we would cease to burn coal in the grate. It was far too valuable a treasure to squander in that fashion. It was not as though coal supplies were inexhaustible. The widespread conviction that oil was better than coal should not be accepted unequivocally. The statement was as misleading as that armies were better than navies. The world's coal supplies were vaster than its oil supplies. There wae reason to believe that the worlds oil supplies would be depleted, and that a. famine w'ould result. It was unreasonable to expect ( a famine in the reasonably near future,'as the continual discovery of new sources all over the world rendered 6uch an eventuality highly improbable. "Owing to the demand for petrol for war purposes, and to the shortage of chipping, there is a prospect of an iusufli cient supply of petrol in Australia, aild a possibility of her being thrown upon her own resources," concluded General Coxen. "For one or more reasons, certain materials—such as wheat, barley, potatoes, and prickly pear—can be ruled out of court as equitable raw materials for the manufacture of pdwer alcohol in Australia. On the other hand, such materials as sweet sorghum stalks, cassava, and sorghum grain are favdurable as a source of alcohol. It behoves Australia, as other countries are doing, to rind ways and means of making thi* country self-supporting in the matter of fuel, on account of its important bearing on national defence."