146	DIAMOND
	Rhokana Corporation. He is also chairman of the Anglo Amer­ican Rhodesian Development Corporation Limited of South­ern Rhodesia, and a director in the Belgian Congo of the Soci6te Miniere du Beceka, and in Portuguese West Africa of the Companhia de Diamantes de Angola. Sir Ernest doesn't subscribe as Cecil Rhodes did to the the­ory of empire: on the contrary, he's not at all nationalistically minded. But, as the presiding judge said of the De Beers charter at the time of the Kimberley Central law suit, it would be easier to say what in the world of finance he isn't than what he is. It was an association of such ideas, no doubt, that pro­duced an uncharacteristic burst of literary allusion to him in the financial columns of the British weekly, The Economist, in June 1954. "In the diamond trade," said The Economist, under the heading "King of Diamonds," "the De Beers group 'doth bestride the narrow world like a Colossus.'" The deriva­tion is clear: Rhodes-Colossus, Rhodes-Oppenheimer, there­fore Oppenheimer-Colossus. It is an oversimplification. In most respects the two men could hardly be less alike, though there is no doubt that Oppenheimer firmly believes in one of Rhodes's basic tenets, that amalgamation is a good thing. It is his application of the tenet that differs. He supports the fun­damental theory of control in diamond trading, but he doesn't carry his passion for tidiness to the extent of using diamond profits to grab land for colonial glory. The control itself, what­ever the occasional disgruntled trader may say in attacking it, is a measure that has won general approbation among dia­mond men, in Rhodes's time and in Oppenheimer's. But Sir Ernest has gone further, in his own way, just as Rhodes went in his: he uses diamond profits to develop a large number of