Читать книгу The Schneider Papers - David M Thomas - Страница 13

Chapter 9: New York: Tuesday, September 22nd 1936

While Harry Mason was flying over Zeebrugge and enjoying his fish-paste and meat sandwiches, Edward ‘Ed’ Guthrie had boarded a train at Fairfield Connecticut. Guthrie, a tall slim man, wore a light summer beige suit with a matching striped brown and light green cotton tie anchored by a plain silver tie clasp. The commuter train was nearly full. Three more stops and about forty-five minutes to go. He found a window seat and nodded to fellow passengers whom he had never spoken with, but recognised after five years of faithful rail commute with the same inbound souls on the 6.47am EST to Grand Central Station. Ed had given up carrying a briefcase a long time ago; if he needed something to read on the journey, then he’d carry it. Work related material was kept at work. Ed was of the thinking that if he needed to bring the office home then he’d sooner go live in the office. A fastidious man, a naturally optimistic man, a family man and churchgoer. Ed hailed from a small town north of Dallas, the evangelical protestant belt of north-east Texas. He also worked for Standard Oil of New Jersey.

Ed usually walked from the station to the office. The morning was blessed with fine weather, scattered clouds and the feel of autumn in the air. Barring driving rain and the sometimes violent horizontal wind due to the Manhattan skyscraper effect, he enjoyed the walk, and today it ended too soon. He entered the foyer of his office building and walked towards the elevator banks. The start of another good day.

In May 1911, the Supreme Court ordered the dissolution of Standard Oil Company, ruling it was in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Standard Oil Company of New Jersey was the heir to the older company. This marvel of the western world, with interests in the richest oil fields in the Americas, and outstretched fingers collecting the biggest revenue of any corporation under the sun, neither explores, produces, refines, transports, nor markets a single drop of oil. It is too big to be concerned with such workaday affairs.

Jersey, as it folksily calls itself, is a holding company; its function is to think, and plan. By 1936 it controlled over 250 companies. Through its subsidiaries Jersey does about a fifth of the world’s oil business and does it around the globe. Modestly, Jersey employs less than 600 people and is able to house them comfortably at 26 Broadway, New York City. The building is topped by a pyramid, modelled on the Mausoleum of Maussollos in Turkey. At the time of completion in 1928, the pyramid was the tallest tower at the southern tip of Manhattan, and was illuminated as a beacon for ships entering the harbour. Behold the perspective of Standard Oil of New Jersey.

Foreign policy is always a concern for Jersey. Republicans and Democrats alike are grist for Jersey’s mill, for US foreign policy is at the service of the corporations in command of what had become in less than two decades the most sensitive, most vital, most essential commodity in the world: oil.

What is good for Jersey is sine qua non to US foreign policy.

The President of Standard Oil of New Jersey was Walter C Teagle, and had been so since 1917. He leads the five man Executive Committee. Flanking the Board was the Coordination Committee, composed of the heads of various technical and economic departments. This committee sifted the facts and figures and prepared decision making options for the Executive Board’s consideration.

Ed Guthrie was a member of the Coordination Committee. His speciality was the marketing of refined products. This morning’s agenda was Europe, to wit, Spain and Germany. With the advent of a new fully blown civil war in Spain and Germany’s overt assistance, a discussion and options for consideration were required about supply of crude oil, products and in particular aviation fuel to the parties concerned.

Jersey’s own intelligence sources had reported this conflagration a’comin’. The sudden quotation request received last month through Jersey’s subsidiary in Berlin for fuel oil, heavy duty lubricants, aviation gas and diesel orders for a Cadiz delivery, and Franco’s similar request, but on credit, was frankly a slam-dunk confirmation.

The topic for today’s meeting was to review, again, the legal issues. A belt and braces job, as one of the lawyers who had spent some legal time in England examining the historic differences of tort law with reference to ‘representation’ and ‘warranty’ commented. A decision had been taken last month that product supply be approved. Wheels and ocean oil tankers were in motion.

Ed had the meeting this morning top heavy with legal beagles, experts in United States and the two aforementioned countries’ trade laws legislation. He had crucially invited an outsider; a senior partner in a Washington law firm held on a generous retainer, and an acknowledged expert on international treaties including the Versailles Treaty of 1919 with relevant amendments and especially the recently passed US Neutrality Act, not to forget the still-in-force Trade with the Enemy Act of 1917. Ed therefore had in front of him an impressive display of legal knowledge, exemplified by a number of heavy-black-spectacled suits staring at him intently and intelligently from both sides of the meeting room table, yellow legal pads open, pens at the ready: waiting for the opening statement.

Jersey, through its various subsidiary companies, had been supplier of crude oil and gasoline products to both Spain and Germany for decades. It would be prudent for this relationship to continue. Spain had no commercial gasoline deposits of its own; it had to import all its needs.

‘A growing economy due to the growth in industry and especially transportation necessitates growth in gasoline refined product requirement or, for Jersey, read sales. Gentlemen, we can substitute civil war for a growing economy, the need for gasoline and lube oil …’ Edward Guthrie was in his opening statement.

And he continued.

‘… so Spain is pretty easy to define. Do we decide to service the government in Madrid which is now controlled by the communists, or the Army which is trying to bring stability and order to the country? Now that Germany has entered the conflict on the side of Franco, we need to kick around the legalities of our supply to a country involved indirectly in a civil war. Our Neutrality Act still kinda niggles me.’

Walter Schronberg, the senior partner with Shronberg, Wilts and Stroner of K Street, Washington DC, cleared his throat, and Ed, taking this polite cue, pointed his pencil at Walt. The senior partner gave a precis of the Neutrality Act of 1935 and its fourteen month extension passed by Congress in February 1936.

‘In essence, Congress has imposed a general embargo on trading in arms and war materials with all parties in a war.’ Walt held up the palm of his hand up to a young upstart ready to ask the predictable; ‘Define war.’ Let me finish youngster, the hand motion said. ‘The Act also forbids all loans and credits to the belligerents. You now have the fundamentals,’ he turned from addressing Ed to the young upstart, ‘open to interpretation, as my distinguished friend across the table was just about to suggest.’ The young upstart with a summa cum laude degree from Stanford Law School went immediately red in the face and looked down at his yellow pad. He doodled on his yellow legal pad for the rest of the meeting.

The others entered the legal argument arena. One after another, cross-table exchanges of views, suggestions, definitions, recent to ancient court precedents, interpretations and the inevitable – it goes with the territory – one upmanship. Voices raised, one brought English Law into play with the mention of mens rea, where a crime consists of both a mental and physical element. Mens rea, in latin, is a person’s awareness of the fact that his or her conduct is criminal and is the mental bit, and rectus reus, the criminal act itself, is the physical element … That’s it, concluded Ed, enough. He realised unless he took a grip this was turning into a college law students debate. He had mentally satisfied himself that one could, if one wanted to, drive a stagecoach though this Act, as written, an opinion that a handsomely commissioned Professor from Harvard Law School had also concluded. Ed was also cognisant of recent information received; five Texaco oil tankers were on their way from Antwerp to fill up Franco. Business, as a wise man once said, is business.

Ed asked if Congress, in the sighting of ominous smoke signals over Europe, could decide to tighten up the Neutrality Act? Inject ‘civil war’ into the ‘war’ definition, and define more precisely the meaning of ‘supply of war materials’?

Walt had been silent throughout the debate. He had nothing to contribute. His expensive legal brain was resting. His reply to Edward Guthrie, Coordination Committee member of the biggest corporation in the world, was as measured as it was succinct: ‘Well, Congress could tighten it up of course, but only if Jersey wanted it to.’

So ended the meeting. Conclusion as predicted: Jersey to continue supply of refined gasoline products to Franco’s new Spain, as it was doing to Hitler’s Germany; company lawyers to continue coordinating with the good offices of Walt Schronberg, who lobbied Congress on its behalf.

Ed ambled back to his corner office overlooking the famous thoroughfare that was Broadway; his secretary stopped him at his door and handed him a telex message. It was from Berlin. It informed Standard Oil of New Jersey that Torkid Rieber, Chairman of the Texas Oil Company, known to one and all as Texaco, had just commissioned the building of several oil tankers from the Deutsche Werft shipyards in Hamburg in return for crude oil.

‘Goddamn!’ was the exclamation from the evangelical presbyterian, and he reached for one of his desk telephones.

‘Yes. That’s right,’ said Ed to someone on the twelfth floor, ‘Rieber is in the bartering business. Oil for new-build tankers. Good way to get round any potential Neutrality Act issues.’ He listened intently to the advice and instructions from the executive floor.

‘Yes, I agree, good idea,’ he finally replied and put down the telephone. Ed swivelled his chair to face the window, and looked out to the harbour and Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. He was thinking.