224	SIR ERNEST OPPENHEIMER
	cannot manufacture in this country, but with the stipulation that the dia­monds should in the first place be offered to the party from whom they were purchased at the price which could be obtained from another purchaser. On the whole it appeared to me that the Government was sympathetic in its attitude and anxious to assist in overcoming the difficulties with wrhich the industry is at present faced. I am hopeful that, in the near future, we shall be in a position to announce that some scheme of effective control of output and limitation of sales has been devised in consultation and co-operation with the Government. . . . In spite of the friendly atmosphere at the conference, as soon as the Mines Department settled down to a detailed examination of the various agreements, serious divergencies of opinion were revealed. The two sides differed on the size of the aggregate quota; on the size of the Government quota; on the question whether the Cape Coast Company was to be given a quota at all; on the disposal of the Merensky diamonds; on the method of controlling alluvial production (though they agreed that some action would be necessary if alluvial production exceeded ^3,000,000 a year); on the method of supplying South African cutters with diamonds; on the amount of the provisional price to be paid to producers (that is, the margin to be retained by the Syndicate) and on the allocation of profits; on the question whether there should be three- or six-monthly determination of the volume of trade; on the length of time during which the agreements should run, and on the question whether 'inferior diamonds' should, or should not, be included in deliveries. As if these points of difference were not enough, the Government added three new requirements, the first, the right of the Government to 'appoint a representative in London or South Africa, or both, with full powers to obtain informa­tion as to transactions in diamonds from outside the Union as well as from inside, examine books of the Syndicate and be present at sales of diamonds coming from the Union'. Secondly, it required a specific pledge that the members of the Syndicate should bejointly and severally liable. Lastly, it demanded 'some ratio between the sales by the Syndi­cate of conference producers' diamonds and their sales of outside diamonds from the Union and South West Africa'. Moreover, as a rider to this demand, an even more drastic claim was set up: the right to 'suspend or terminate all sales agreements ... if the volume of trade for the conference producers for any period of six months falls below -£3,000,000 unless the Syndicate elects to take that amount from the producers'. This, at a time when confidence was already
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