group
found themselves helping war victims by giving them employment in their
factories, but it was not a very big problem. According to Mr.
Monnickendam, a cutter and himself a resident of Britain since World
War I, there were only a hundred of these diamond workers who managed
to reach England.
One
day recently I visited the factory of Briefel & Lemer, in
Clerkenwell. Like most workplaces of this most glamorous of trades, it
is hidden away in a somber back street of London, in a red-brick
neighborhood that the ordinary shopper would never think of penetrating
because nothing is there for the ordinary shopper to buy. Mr. Briefel
had sent for me in a town car of more than middling splendor,
explaining with truth that otherwise I would never be able to find my
way. The driver, a friendly man, laughed at my puzzled expression when
he drove through a tortuous alley and turned in to a garage that was
not merely a garage, but very evidently a warehouse for several
factories that produced various sorts of machinery. He used practiced
skill in parking the car between big stacked packing cases, discoursing
as he did so. He was proud of the locality of his employer's factory.
It seemed to him, as it did to me, piquant. For him the cream of the
joke, evidently, was that he had to take me up to the floor occupied by
Briefel & Lemer in a freight elevator. I wasn't all that much
amused. I was getting used to it. An industry that carries things like
the Koh-i-nur around in old cigarette tins is not likely to feel out of
place upstairs over a warehouse.
The
main office was a large room but pretty well filled up. Mr. Briefel was
there, and his partner Mr. Lemer, and a secretary. It was more like a
studio than a business sanctum, though there were desks. A long table
ran along one side. There
