GERMAN WAR CHEST OPENED.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 7, Issue 216, 29 May 1915, Page 7

GERMAN WAR CHEST OPENED.

Germany, despite the cheerful statements of her financial experts as to the adequacy of her gold reserves has apparently been compelled, writes The Timese, to open the secret war chest — the hoard of gold kept for any warlike emergency in the strong rooms of the fortress of Spandau, near Berlin. Originally the war chest (Reichsschatz) contained £6,000,000, which was reserved from the indemnity paid by France in 1572 after the FrancoPrussian war. When that sum was placed in the Juliius Tower at Spandau it comprised a considerable proportion of gold in English sovereigns. A considerable number of these coins have now found their way back to one of the big joint stock banks in Lonuon, showing that the hoard which for 43 years had lain untouched has now been drawn upon. The bankers, who received the gold by way of Scandinavia —a fact which might suggest that it was used x o pay for imports other than armament — were at once struck by the fact that they had received a number of new, unworn sovereigns, bearing the date 1572. But the presumption that the money came from the treasure house of Spandau was strengthened by the surprising fact that the original Bank of England labels of 1872 were found on some of the bags containing the coins. Apparently this consignment of English gold had lain unopened at Spandau since that year. The sovereigns are of the "shield" pattern, with the head of Queen Victoria on one side and a shield on the other.

Bankers expressed some surprise that no effort had been made to conceal the place of origin of the gold by removal of the old Bank of England labels, as the knowledge that the war chest is being drawn upon might readily, when it became public, be construed as symptomatic of Germany's position in regard to gold, supplies. At the opening of the Reichstag, Dr. Hcffeneh, Secretary of State for the Imperial Treasury, asserted that Germany in respect of her stock of gold is better off than Great Britain, France, or Russia. A few days earlier the German wireless stated that the gold reserve of the Reichstag on February 27 was £113.500,000.