Caltex Petroleum Corp. is placing elaborate advertisements in newspapers and magazines here to tell South Africans about its search for South African oil. Caltex is 50% owned by Standard Oil Co. of California, San Francisco, and by Texaco Inc., New York. "Ahead of Caltex," the ads say, "lies lonely years of search and, perhaps disappointment - or the discovery which will free South Africa, for all time, from dependence on outside oil supplies. "Caltex means business - and the business is South African oil." This Caltex campaign is a dramatic illustration of how American business grows more deeply involved in South Africa every year despite all the protests by student groups and liberal organizations in the United States that American investment, bolsters apartheid. Sometimes American firms seem embarrassed by the involvement. Not one, for example, volunteered to testify before the House Foreign Affairs Committee in 1966 when it had hearings on American policy toward South Africa. But profits are so good that the firms swallow any embarrassment, do more business in South Africa, and, as the Caltex campaign shows, even boast about it to South Africans...

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