Time: 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.