SECURITY ENDANGERED

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25849, 21 May 1945, Page 6

SECURITY ENDANGERED

INTERNATIONAL CARTELS ALLEGATIONS AGAINST OIL COMPANY WASHINGTON, May 18. Assistant Attorney-general Berge, giving evidence before the Senate Judiciary Committee, alleged that some American business men endangered United States -security by international business cartels. Mr Berge said: “ It is difficult to see how the future policies of the Atlantic Charter, for example, can be executed successfully if the dispositions made by cartels continue into the post-war world.” Referring to the agreements between Standard Oil and I. G. Farben, Mr Berge said Standard Oil not only granted the German firm control over the manufacture of synthetic rubber, but only a few weeks before Pearl Harbour was co-operating to keep other firms from the synthetic rubber field.

Standard Oil never considered it was making foreign policy, or considered the political implication of its acts.

Mr Berge added that under the terms of the Standard-I. G. Farben contract war was regarded as an “ unfortunate interlude,” and provision was made for a new agreement, “in the spirit of the old,” when hostilities "It is futile to endeavouf to build post-war trade between nations if secret agreements between large industrial interests are allowed to dash with Government policy.” Mr Orville Harden, vice-president of Standard Oil, told the committee that the company had nothing to hide and would have been glad to give the Government the full terms of the agreements if there had been any requirement or procedure for doing so. He added that Standard Oil had entered the arrangements with I. G. Farben because it was the only way in which it could get the German trust to sell the new technology. Standard Oil thought what it got and the way it got it was enormously valuable to the nation.