272
SIR ERNEST OPPENHEIMER
the
way in which the case had been put to the public by the Government.
'It must be obvious', he said, 'that the Minister meant to create the
impression that the Diamond Corporation dehberately entered into an
agreement with no intention whatsoever of carrying it out.' He was
referring to the agreement of 1931. He attacked the Advisory Committee
'which had completely usurped the functions of the Minister' for
resorting to the 'immoral expedient of using the fact that the Governor
General's approval was necessary to the inter-producers' agreement in
order to acquire for the Minister of Mines powers with regard to the
sales agreements which were not provided for in the law and which, I
venture to say, this honourable House would be far too sensible and too
fair-minded to countenance.' Not content with that, after the
agreements had been signed by the producers in December 1930, further
delays took place for the purpose of extorting further concessions:
Government resorting to the 'frivolous and despicable quibble that
since they had neglected to submit these agreements to the
Governor-General, for approval, they were not binding'. And yet the
world situation was changing:
.
. . during this long period it was only by the greatest patience and
self-control on the part of the producers that it was possible to keep
the trade together. For though the Hon. the Minister may not have
realized it, the old order of things had changed. It was no longer a
case of merchants falling over one another to become members of the
Syndicate and to put their money into diamonds; rather it was most
difficult for the producers to induce the members of the old Syndicate
or anyone of financial standing to keep their money in a trade which is
in a singularly depressed state, and in which they are subject to every
petty annoyance and major tyranny that the ingenuity of the Mines
Department can devise.
The
result of these delays was, naturally, to make things worse: there was
not only the world slump but confidence was undermined:
The
merchants in Antwerp and Amsterdam, for instance, who have not had the
advantage of the long experience of the Minister, imagined that when it
was announced that virtual agreement had been reached, this was in fact
the case. They know better now, and the Hon. the Minister must not be
surprised if in future his assurance of the good intentions of the
South African Government are received in the diamond market with a
certain reserve.
Having now disposed of the charge that it was the deliberate fault of the producers that only a short time had elapsed between the time that the final assent of the Government had been obtained and the reopen-
