FRANCE'S TREASURE

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 3, Issue 613, 18 August 1933, Page 2

FRANCE'S TREASURE

.GUARDING THE GQJLp URiEAT jSTERL UATACOMBS HIDING A YAST HOARD. SOLID ROCK BARRIERS.. It is hard to think of more than 80,000,000,000 francs of gold as anything but an arithmetical fi'gure with as niuch validity as the 3000-odd light-years of distance between us and the Milky Way. That much^money to the average wageearner is not only incomprehensible but unreal — a mere conventiona used by international bankers. Even to walk along a corridor and look at the gold in its compartments carries little conviction in' itself (writes Herbert L. Matthews in the New York Times). And as for the place within which' it is kept, oue gets above all that , . ya'gue sensation of something fantastic and even horrible which mechanical perfection alwa-ys -arouses. For -thestrongrooms of the Bank of Frapce constitutes a world in themselves, a self-sufRcient microcosm -that can go : on functioning by itself for eighty. days. To visit th'at most modern of oatacombs is to leave, for a little while at least, the prosaic world of a busy, noisy city for a place completely apart from the routine existence going on some thirty yards overhead. Nothing could look less distinguished than the bare plot of ground adjacent to the Bank of France building, about two and a half acres in size, surrounded by a plain wooden fence, past which thousands of people walk everv

day without giving it a thought. Yet ' there has been more concentrated mechanical ingenuity lavished on that spot than on any similar area in Paris, if not in the world. The reason for that extraordinary expenditure of time, money, and effort are, of eourse, perfectly lo'gical. Of all metals, gold is the most negotiable. A collection of more than £600,000,000 worth of it constitutes a treasure almost as great as any gathered together in one place in the history of the world. No precaution can be too great in, safeguarding such a hoard. What They Fear. It may seem rather far-fetched to worry about thieves making oif with anything so colossal, both in value and in weight, as 80,000,000,000 francs in gold bars and coins. As a miatter of fact, the directors of the Bank of France are not worried about burglars. They are thinking of the years from 1914 to 1918 when a hostile larmy fought is way almost to the gates of Paris. They are thinking of bombers and Big Berthas, or devastating fires and, ahove all things, of re-' volutions. The better to understand the workings of this most ingenious of refuges, let us pretend that a sudden uprising of discontented miners and agricultural labourers has taken place in the provinces and an army of revolittionaries has started to sweep down on Paris. In the building of the Bank of France clerks and cashiers and experts and directors are working at their desks and in their offices when suddenly an alarm is sounded. Every man and woman knows exactly what to do, just as the employees of any large factory would know how to act in case of a fire alarm. Bank-books, bonds, securities, valuable papers, and cash are all put into certain recesses in the walls, from which they slide swiftly through '•tubes to the strongrooms, far below. Rfeanwhile, th-e- 'fprocession has already started by stair and elevator towards the subterranean haven. From museums all over the city — the Louvre, the Cluny, the Luxembourg, and others — automobiles are rushing some of the greatest art treasui'es in. the world — statues, paintings, jewellery, manuscripts. On arrival at the bank these objects are hastily sent down to a series of rooms espeeially set aside for them. The Way In. All the bank's employees must go the same way, for there is only one entrance. It is seven storeys under' the ground, and wh'ether you walk or take the elevators it is .a zig-zag journey, for the engineers are taking no chances that a lucky bomb dropped from an aeroplane should go straight down to the level of the strongrooms before exploding. If you are on the third floor of the bank, for instance, you first take an elevator to the ground floor, then another three flights underground, and finally a cage-like lift going down through a great steel shaft around which wind two sets of stairs. The two oflicials who alone have the open sesame of this modern treasure cave have swung back the immense steel door of the entrance — a solid piece of metal weighing 17,500 lb and as thiek as a man — showing a narrow passage in the midst of which is a revolving steel turret. The refugees go through in single file; . there is no room for two abreast. ■ When all are in the directors follow, iand the great door is' swung to and locked. But that door, powerful . though it is, is not the greatest of the obstaeles which keep the invader from entering. Once the employees : are inside, the passageway is .cleared. Five yards backs is an immense steel bloek severn feet high and nearly as wide, weighing more than a ton and a half. An offieial presses a hutton,; starting an electric motor behind the block, driving it forward into the pas- ; sage, wh'ere it stops at the turret. A, lever is manipulated: .the block swings in a half-turn and the passage is bolted as if by a gigantic lo.ck. Should the electric current fail, .the: block is so disposed that it can he moved easily :by hand. Protecting Rock. : To get in, then, is not only a ques•tion of hlasting open the first great 'door but of literally hewing a way through seven feet of immovaible steel. Should th'e invaders, instead, seek to dig and hlast their way through tlje ( ground from the vacant lot above, , a their task woujld be eyen greater.; - Thirty yards, not only of plain rock ! but of rock through which ■ water is - ] continually seeping, " s.eparates the l.] strongrooms from the surface. Mili- ,

tary engineers. h'avp gparantee.d that , th^t rock is profection against ^ny knpw-n expjosive. * Ther,e is so much water, m f^ct, that the -subterranean forftress hg.d to h.e epcircled with a double pj demenit Ple.d in with an •impermeajfle ?nateriai. The personnel of the Bank of France are now in a haven of refuge where no one can disturb them for at least eighty days. Save for their owp talking and shuffling about, the quieb ' is something -men -g-enerally never ex- ? .pefience. For these Paris'ians, whos.e : ears are attuned to the roar of a 1 great .city, whose .every hreath of .ajr ; contains gasoline fumes or smoke or dust, this is a peaceful spjot — -though ' death and destruction might be rag- ; ing thirty yards overhead. All is spotlessly clean. Steel cement forms the outer walls and partitions, and inside are 750 columns of reinforced cement. The air the ten■ants breathe is pure and fresh, pumped from the outside by one .of three great Diesel engines, off to one side ■pf the fqrtress. It comes through hundreds of oonduits in the masonr ry, whose locations are one of the many cai'efully-guarded secrets of fantastic world within a world. These ventilators are not built as conti-nu- ■' ous tubes, but zig-zagged, so that: even if the enemy* found a dozen or so and dropped hand grenades down, they .could ,jo no damage. Qr if they . tried to send 4own poison gas, there • js a .device to rev-er&e the current and ; send it -back. The air that comes through is filtered, moistened from - the water in the rock, and heated so that the temperature of the place is always comfortahly kept between 65 and 68 degrees Fahrenheit. From the Diesel engines, too, comes the power to give the light and serve whatever other purposes electricity is needed for. There is sufficient oil "to keep them going for two and a half months.