Archives

London, 2nd September, 1915
MM. Worms & Co - Paris

Dear Sirs,
We have to acknowledge receipt of your special letter of the 31st ulto. upon the subject of the Port Said price in view of the great change which has taken place in the freight market since the Meeting held on the 23rd ulto., the contents of which have our careful attention and in our opinion are fully justified. We lost no time in submitting a copy of your remarks to M. Newton Dunn who, in anticipation of same, had sounded MM. Moxey, Savon & C° upon the subject yesterday afternoon, but the latter notwithstanding the fact that they had just paid 32/6 freight themselves from Cardiff to Port Said were obdurate in their objection to making any advance in the price at Port Said; M. Dunn said this being so there was no alternative but to call a Meeting to ventilate the matter unless you could bring any pressure to bear upon MM. Moxey, Savon & C° through their partners in Marseilles in view of the point which you mention in the last paragraph of your letter, but this you told us you were unwilling to do. M. Newton Dunn has been occupied nearly the whole day at the monthly Meeting of MM. Lambert Brothers Ltd., but we have just managed to get hold of him and convey to him your message of this afternoon that "we cannot go on like this for ever allowing the majority to be dictated to by M. Moxey so you see no harm in holding "the Meeting". At the same time we told M. Dunn for his private information that if he was afraid that M. Moxey, in the event of the matter being pressed, would give notice to terminate the Agreement, you would rather leave well alone, but he did not seem to be very much afraid of this as he replied that "M. Moxey could not go on threatening for ever and after all he must know the Agreement was of considerable value to him from a pecuniary point of view".
M. Dunn is accordingly summoning a Meeting for 11.30 on Tuesday so that the matter may be discussed; his feeling was that Tuesday would be a better day than Monday so that there might be a little more time for matters as regards the freight market to develop.
We are, Dear Sirs,
Yours truly,

James Burness & Sons