Again, Rickett

The Italo-Ethiopian War still has the benefit of a large, roving x quantity in bluff, pushing Francis William Rickett, the British promoter who wangled a huge concession from Haile Selassie for Standard Vacuum Oil and then, to an international chorus of "Shame! Shame!" was paid off and repudiated by the U. S. concern (TIME, Sept. 9 et seq.). Dressy Mr. Rickett's importance survived last autumn's misadventure because his safe continued to be the repository for the concession for the subsoil rights to precisely the two-thirds of Ethiopia that Benito Mussolini wants. The contract gives Rickett five years in which to implement the deal with capital.

Last week Hearstman Karl von Wiegand, Universal Service's roving correspondent, resoundingly "scooped"' his colleagues with the astonishing assertion that Rickett had sold, subject to Haile Selassie's agreement, his Ethiopian concession to its most logical purchaser: Benito Mussolini. If this were true, Haile Selassie had a face-saving opportunity to reject Italy's military demands while selling the invaders two-thirds of Ethiopia on a business basis and thus ending the war. Wrote Correspondent von Wiegand:

"Before he left for Addis Ababa [fortnight ago], Rickett held three conferences with Mussolini. . . . Rickett, according to his friends, considered himself badly let down by Socony-Vacuum. . . . [From Mussolini] Rickett, it is asserted, demanded $5,000,000 for his share. . . . Rickett, it is claimed here, then made a provisional deal under which he is to get 20,000,000 lire ($1,600,000), partly in stock, if he delivers to Italy this $50,000,000 concession with its virtually unlimited scope of oil, minerals and other exploitation rights for 75 years. . . . The message Rickett claimed to have sent II Duce read:

" 'Why use a sword on what you can get with a stroke of a pen?' "

However true any of this was, it was by no means out of line with the ambiguous and profitable fortunes of Mr. Rickett. Keeping his wife and three children immured in a Welsh castle at Amroth. he gives stag parties for the great at his farm at East Garston in Berkshire, in rebuilding which he hired only local people, becoming the village's chief support and eventually Master of Foxhounds of its swank Craven Hunt and president of the Hungerford Fat Stock Show. In neither of these squirely retreats did he discuss his third life as a concession-wangler among Eastern potentates whose Oriental courage and vanity genuinely attract him and whom he, like the late great T. E. Lawrence, genuinely impresses.

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