BELGIUM: Elusive Diamonds

Sometimes keenest, shrewdest correspondents are fooled. For example the United Press, Associated Press and even the impeccable London Times asserted, last week, that Italian divers had recovered $2,000,000 in diamonds from the Belgian steamer Elizabethville, which was sunk off the western coast of France, eleven years ago, by a German submarine.

Actually all that had been recovered was the diamond safe. When it was opened, last week, in the presence of armed guards and frock coated officials, there was found nothing of value except 1,871 Belgian paper francs and four English gold sovereigns—a total haul of $72. Probable explanation: after the Elizabethville was torpedoed her captain tried to save the diamonds by embarking with, them in a lifeboat, sank “somewhere in the Atlantic.” Fortunately the Elizabethville’ s hulk contains ten tons of valuable ivory tusks from the Belgian Congo which will now be laboriously raised, thus enabling the disappointed Italian salvage firm to “break even”