OMA..
Under Secretary of State.
2
April 21st, 1916.
in general; unjust as it is to the parties concerned, in particular to the Texas Company, and detrimental to its business.
606
The demand of the London house for a "three to five years" contract with the Texas Company has met with an absolute refusal and with undisguised displeasure; and it is perhaps needless to add that ay Company equally refuses the London house's further demand to ex- clude it from this Joint Agency Agreement, as now accepted by Hongkong inexplicable demands as coming from people to wion we introduced this business and which the Texas Company and we put confidingly into their hands.
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It has been suggested to us that the reason for these strange demands was that the London people saw perhaps in the Texas Company's disinclination to grant a longer term of contract a design on its part to return its agency to the Germans after the war; and, as I wrote to Hongkong, I was glad to be able o put forward to the Texas Company at least this suggestion, coming moreover from a gentleman whose judgment and authority commands all attention. I was glad in· deed because the Texas Company are not in the habit of discussing un- substantiated demands, made moreover in an attitude "this is to take it or to leave it".
Of course, by asking for a period of contract likely to carry us beyond the termination of the war, and by excluding my Company, a pontingency such as referred to would be practically precluded. How-
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ever.
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er for any other reason, to depart from their regular form of contract,
the Texas Company does not see its way, for reasons like these
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