A Pragmatist and a Pioneer

It was the first encounter between the two famed, publicity-shy Americans. Jean Paul Getty, 81, probably the richest man in the world, has a personal oil fortune estimated at $4 billion and has lived in England for the past 20 years, seeing only business associates and close friends. Charles Lindbergh, 72, the first man to fly the Atlantic solo, has long avoided public life, emerging only to promote conservation causes. Last week both met with TIME Correspondent William McWhirter. The occasion: Getty had just endowed a $50,000 prize through the World Wildlife Fund, for outstanding service to conservation. The place: Getty's vast Tudor manor, Sutton Place, 25 miles from London. Its spacious gardens and lawns are surrounded by double fences covered with barbed wire and are patrolled by plain-clothes guards along with 25 German shepherd attack dogs. McWhirter's report:

Afternoon sun streamed into the large, formal drawing room, softly burnishing the exquisite antique furniture and brightening the fresh cut flowers. The two aging men sat by a blazing fire, chatting easily. Getty, though suffering from Parkinson's disease and internal ailments, still can show flashes of the aggressiveness that built an oil empire. He speaks slowly and deliberately. Lindbergh is hale and well tanned. He looks his role-dedicated environmentalist and exponent of slow, carefully planned industrial growth.

GETTY: Conservation is very important, and some people think it will take care of itself. It won't. But the modern world is more or less based on oil, isn't it? Without oil, we'd go back one or two generations. I can still remember, about the close of the 19th century, going out for a ride with my father. He was very well off. He had two horses, a coach and a carriage. But the only oil he needed was a little lubricating oil on the axles. I don't know how many people would be willing to go back to that.

LINDBERGH: It's quite clear that we cannot keep on this same curve of consumption of natural resources. They just aren't there. But we are not going to return to the ways of life we had before, either. We've got to achieve a balance. My own feeling is that the quality of life was better in my grandfather's time than it is in ours. My wife and I have a little gasoline generator to provide power in our home in Hawaii. Because of the fuel shortage, we stopped using it. We've gone back to six kerosene lamps instead. It's a lovely soft light and we like it very much.

GETTY: Well, it's more comfortable today. They once had no bathrooms in this house. They used to go upstairs with a candle and that was the only light to get dressed or go to bed by. Drafts in the house were always blowing out the candles, and since there were no matches, it took about five minutes to get a spark by using flint and tinder. Some conservationists will only be satisfied if they can freeze to death in the dark, but sensible control is still very important.

LINDBERGH: It took flying for me to realize what was happening to the surface of the earth, actually seeing it.

GETTY: I've only flown in an airplane twice in my life. Once in 1916 and the second in 1942.

LINDBERGH: If you flew over an area that you remember, in the West for instance, it would certainly look very different. The erosion from both water and wind is very clear, as is the slashing down of forests in many, many areas. Maybe the most noticeable thing for you would be looking down on the coastal area, seeing how great cities, towns, villages, tremendous housing masses extend to the horizons, spilling over mountains where farms and orchards used to be. But in order to use well, in order to exploit, you also have to conserve.

GETTY: Well, I don't call myself a conservationist to the extent that some enthusiasts do. In other words, I believe in the Alaska pipeline. I wouldn't expect to find the Getty Oil Co. lobbying against it, because we need oil. But I can understand the need for government controls in some areas. I don't think governments can limit the quantity of exploration. But they can decide how it can be done. There are very strict regulations in the North Sea on drilling, blowouts and so forth, and there have been no oil spills. I think that's beneficial.

LINDBERGH: I think it is inevitable that we come to government control of natural resources. I see no way to preserve world resources without that control. Obviously, we have to have oil and energy in the future. But how do we balance this with where the lines go and how much is taken?

GETTY: The Arabs are obviously going to get richer. The balance of world wealth is swinging toward the Eastern Hemisphere. I'm not sure, though, that these countries will become happier and more contented places as a result. Money doesn't necessarily have any connection with happiness. Maybe with unhappiness.

LINDBERGH: I've never had more enjoyable times than with some tribal peoples who have, of course, almost no wealth by our standards.

GETTY: I never enjoyed making money, never started out to make a lot of it. I was superstitious about these people who say they are going to make a lot of money. My mother used to say that when she was a young girl she used to follow books written by health experts. But she stopped when she read their obituaries. Most of them died in their 50s.

Looking ahead, maybe 100 years, oil as we know it today will be found only in museums. By then we'll be using better sources of energy, and I would expect Getty to be still in the energy business. Energy will probably cost more, but then no one has been selling buffalo robes for $1 since the 1880s either.

LINDBERGH: In relation to our present resources, population and affluent life-styles in Europe and America, we quite obviously cannot maintain our present rate of growth. What do we do? Does this trend bend? Does it break?

GETTY: Things burst and the devil drives. We have to cut our coats according to our cloth. If we haven't enough energy, we'll have to get along on what we've got.

LINDBERGH: So it's a case of adjusting life to the energy available and its costs?

GETTY: There is no alternative. Unless you want to go back to horses, buggies or bicycles, as in China. I kind of take industrial growth and its complications in my stride. I didn't have any control over things. My life has really been like that of the soldiers in the "Light Brigade"-"Theirs not to reason why/ Theirs but to do and die."

I'll see whether my prize for conservation does any good or not. It is just a drop in the ocean. I think money invested in a company that gives employment to people and good merchandise at a reasonable price is better invested than it would be in charities. I think people want jobs more than they want charity. If I am remembered at all, it will be because I created a lot of jobs for a lot of people.

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