RUSSIA: Moscow Gold

Same day the Polish gold arrived, Paris experts announced they had totted up what they thought was a fair estimate of Soviet Russia’s gold reserve. Before World War I Russia ranked fourth among the gold-producing countries of the world. She has vast deposits in the Ural and Caucasus and in Siberia. But according to the Paris experts, the dust has not been panning out the way it should have. As a “considerable over-estimate,” the Frenchmen thought the Soviet might have in ready gold 21,000,000 ounces ($760,000,000)—only four times as much as the U. S. produces in a single year; at present less than one-twentieth of the total U. S. reserve. But as European gold reserves go, 21,000,000 ounces is sizable.

Last week Russia’s gold reserve was a cause of acute alarm to the British Government. A rumor reached London that Russia had shipped 17½ tons of gold to Germany. At first the British Foreign Office was highly skeptical of the rumor, but later, when Sir Alfred Knox asked in the House of Commons whether the Government was aware of the report, Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs Richard Austen Butler replied: “Yes, sir, and my noble friend [Foreign Secretary Viscount Halifax] has reason to believe that this report is not without foundation.” If the Soviet Union was going to give Germany the wherewithal to buy raw materials abroad, possibly in fee simple for hands off in the East Baltic, the blockading British had something to worry about.