this novel? Tartarin, the hero of the book, was essentially a common, "good-natured" petty bourgeois. But he had such an extravagant imagination and such a capacity for telling "cock and bull" stories that, eventually, he become the victim of these unusual abilities, Tartarin boastingly assured everybody that he killed an innumerable number of lions and tigers on the Atlas Mountains. His credulous friends bestowed on him the order of the greatest lion-hunter in the world. Tartarin boasted of having climbed to the peak of Mont-Blanc. His credulous friends therefore bestowed on him the order of the greatest mountain-climber in the world. However, Alphonse Daudet surely knew that Tartarin never even saw the peak of Mont-Blanc, because he was only at the foot of it. Tartarin boasted that he founded a great colony in a country, a long distance from France. His credulous friends, therefore, bestowed on him the order of the greatest coloniser in the world. However, Alphonse Daudet surely knew, as Tartarin himself had to admit, that nothing but disgrace could result from Tartarin's imaginations.
We have now exhausted the first list of questions, let us now deal with the questions of the French Delegation.
*****
Question 1.—How does the USSR Government propose to struggle against the foreign oil concerns?
Answer.—I do not think that this is the right way to raise this question. One might think that the Soviet oil industry intends to make an attack on the oil concerns of other countries and aims at their overthrow and liquidation. But is this really the case? Certainly not. The fact is that certain oil concerns in capitalist countries are endeavouring to throttle the oil industry of Soviet Russia, whereas the latter has to defend itself in order to be able to exist and develop. The Soviet oil industry is weaker than the oil industry of the capitalist countries in regard to production—we produce
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