one
who knows him, however slightly, that here is an evil or haughty
character. Besides, he lives quietly. Envy is not exacerbated by the
spectacle of wild Oppenheimer extravagance. Moreover, he is generous,
and he is quiet about that too. He makes many of his donations through
the Anglo American Corporation, and these are on record: what he gives
away privately is a matter of speculation. The money admittedly given
away by him as separate from the De Beers donations as a company comes
to more than one hundred and fifteen thousand pounds to charitable and
other institutions and more than seventy thousand to educational and
other institutions, not counting a recent gift, in partnership with his
son, of one hundred thousand pounds to Oxford University to found the
new Queen Elizabeth House, devoted to the study of Commonwealth
relations. There is good reason to suspect, however, that this is only
part of the story, but, if so, Sir Ernest isn't telling the rest of it.
Ernest
Oppenheimer was born in 1880 in Friedberg near Frankfurt, Hesse
Province. The revolution of 1848 had affected his family, as it did
many other middle-class people of the period, with a dissatisfaction
that showed itself in a strong urge to get out of the country while the
getting was good, before the reactionary Prussian influence crushed all
liberalism. Ernest's parents remained in Friedberg to rear their large
family, but several of his uncles found their way to England and
settled down there. Ernest was fifth of the six sons of his parents:
there were four girls besides. The state of Germany did not improve as
these children grew up, and most of them followed their relatives
across the Channel and found jobs in London. When Ernest was sixteen
years old his elder brother Bernard
