Zaharoff-Hidden Giant

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 828, 23 November 1929, Page 18

Zaharoff-Hidden Giant

Swaying the Nations And Paying for a IVar

'■'JpfT’* BOUT Sir Basil Zaharoff, the international financalled ‘'the sleeping Mr partner of the world,-" rdf '' fSM there have been two i great mysteries —who he is and wliat j he does. Surprising disclosures are made by | a German financial journalist, Dr. j Richard Lewisohn, in a fascinating j book, “The Man Behind the Scenes: j The Career of Sir Basil Zaharoff.” ; Sir Basil, the son of poor Greek i parents, was born SO years ago in j a mountain village of Anatolia, in j Asia Minor. The family had suffered 1 from Turkish persecution and fled to Odessa. Zaliaroff received a fair education at the English school in Constantinople, acting as a guide to foreign tourists in his spare time. He entered the business of his uncle, a Constantinople merchant, and was taken into partnership. The sequel is one of the strangest episodes of his strange' career. There was a breach. Zaliaroff went to England and was arrested on a charge of Theft brought by his uncle. He was tried and acquitted; in a statement which he made later in Athens to his friend and patron, M. Etienne Skuludis, afterward Prime Minister of Greece, he described liow in the last moments before the trial lie made a dramatic discovery in the pocket of an old fur coat of a letter proving his innocence, and demonstrating his uncle’s perfidy. “He emerged as the moral victor,” says M. Skuludis in his preface to this book. Versions of this story, observes Dr. Lewisohn. still circulate in the capitals of Europe. A distortion followed Zaharoff to Athens, where lie next sought his fortune.. Pie was coldshouldered. Then his chance came. Pie was appointed agent for Nordenfelt, the armaments firm, in the Balkans. His first big stroke was to sell a submarine —the first submarine sold —to Greece. That was nearly 50 years ago. Soon after he sold two submarines to Turkey. He was Vickers’s agent and a large shareholder how large nobody knows: lie continued to be a traveller. Rushing through Europe in an express train to provide nations, which would perhaps be fighting each other on the following day, with the same weapons—that was Basil Zaharoff’s business. His manner to all countries was charming and zealous, though he did not always charge the same price. His best market was Russia. In 1913 he secured the contract for the construction of an enormous arsenal at Zarizyn on the Volga. But still his name was scarcely known to the public, though in July, 1914, he became a Commander of the Legion of Honour. His G. 0.8. followed four years later. He was 65 when the war began: Men like Zaharoff, whose international reflations were widely ramified, were in particular demand, for they could move

more easily man official representatives, could act as agents, make proposals, establish friendships, and weave new threads between the Allied States and tlio.se which were still neutral.,. . . Zaharoff was an adept at operating behind the scenes, and knew both the technique and the geography of that underground activity which was everywhere becoming an important adjunct to high politics. He had long supported Veniselos. He now organised and financed a widespread system of propaganda, provided, says his biographer, a million and a half francs for the establishment of Agence Radio, the Balkan news agency, bought newspapers, and largely financed the Veniselist movement for “national defence." At the end of the war he was at the zenith of his power. Then his judgment failed: His life in the north, his work behind the scenes, had refined Zaharoff’s sense of touch, but at heart he remained the impetuous youth he had been in his adventurous days. No undertaking was too great or too dangerous for him. He was the man behind the Greek offensive against the Turks in Asia Minor. Questions were asked about him in the House of Commons. Dr. Lewisohn attributes to Zah'aroffs illfated intervention the fall of Mr. Lloyd George’s Government. But he had lost heavily: It is said that the unsuccessful issue of the Asia Minor expedition cost Zaharoff half his fortune. Though this is certainly an exaggeration, his losses, even in relation to his wealth, were huge. Deliveries of arms on credit and money loans were no longer possible. Above all, the vast organisation that he had built up side by side but independent of Vickers was now meaningless. He is old now and he has retired: Basil Zaharoff has to admit that a servant takes him about in Monte Carlo in a bath-chair. All that is left to him is to look round from the hotel terrace. . . . Whoever approaches him uninvited can still receive a blowing up. He still has strength enough for that.