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First Lord of Diamonds is mustached Sir Ernest Oppenheimer, who lives grandly at Johannesburg, makes occasional visits to London. Sir Ernest, knighted in 1921 for services to the Empire, is chairman of Diamond Corp., which controls 95% of the world's diamond production, chairman of De Beers Consolidated Mines, world's most important diamond mining company. As boss of both ends of Britain's diamond cartel, he always lets his left hand know what his right is doing. When buyers get languid, Sir Ernest's tight little combination turns off the diamond supply like a kitchen tap. The supply: British and Belgian Africa, whose "pipes" (blue clay mines) and alluvial deposits yield 97% of the world's output. The other 3%, including black diamonds, is sifted haphazardly by natives from river alluvium in Brazil.
When World War II began, the British cartel cut the Germans out of the market, black-listed dealers who could not convince Sir Ernest's executives they would not let their purchases into the Reich. When the British held the Pan-American Clipper at Bermuda and seized U. S. ship mail at Gibraltar, one big object of their search was diamonds headed for Nazi factories. Last week U. S. industrialists might well ponder what a Hitler-dominated cartel could do to mass production in the U. S.