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256                                     SIR ERNEST OPPENHEIMER
My chief worry is Dicorp in London and our price policy. I am sure these problems will also be solved.
♦ VII ♦
His next task was to deal with the 'outside producers' and to persuade them to fall into line; in October he was in Brussels and on 22 October the Diamond Corporation in London was able to cable the Diamond Corporation at Kimberley to the effect that agreement had been reached on the following:
(1)    All parties accepted principle not forcing diamond deliveries on [Diamond] Corporation and making any payments deliveries 1932 as easy as possible to enable Dicorp adopt firm policy in selling, thus establishing industry and improving prices.
(2)    Understanding is that none of the companies will ask for more money than is required for absolute minimum working expenditure.
. . . Foregoing arrangements result, apart from direct, in a considerable indirect reduction deliveries and consequent relief financial obligations. Absence sales this week is direct result of now established policy main­taining and if possible raising price levels.
The agreements with Angola, Forminiere and B.C.K. had already been renewed to run to 1934, but the Congo companies agreed to suspend, in line with the Union companies, deliveries during the period July-December 1931, and payments due during 1932 were to be 'stag­gered' over a fifteen-month period. As regards the Angola company 'while for political reasons' the new contract embodied the same terms as the then current ones, payments were also to be 'staggered'. In an elaborate memorandum summing up the results of the Brussels conference, the preamble stated that, while 'arrangements for deliveries and payments have been made in such a manner as to ensure that the Syndicate and/or the Diamond Corporation, so long as the diamond market remains inactive, shall not be called upon to provide any payments except such as represent the minimum requirements of the Congo companies for covering present financial commitments of the Congo companies and carrying on operations in the Congo', never­theless 'it is . . . understood that if there should be an improvement in the diamond market, resulting in substantially increased sales . . . the payments will be accelerated and it is not the intention that the Syndi­cate and/or the Diamond Corporation should utilize facilities which are not necessitated by the state of the diamond market'.
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