MILLIONS IN INGOTS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21266, 21 February 1931, Page 18

MILLIONS IN INGOTS.

EUROPE’S RICHEST TREASUREFORTRESS UNDERGROUND. GUARDS BULLION OF FRANCE. ■ Entrenched in casements stronger than the Yerdun forts, locked up. in a frame of steel, water, and rock, lies buried deep in the middle of Paris the gold bullion of France. It is the largest stock of yellow metal in Europe, second only to the gold owned by United States Federal Reserve banks. In a late weekly report France’s total gold was figured at £387,800,000. But almost! every day brings to the vaults of the Banque de France new barrels loaded with gold, and this total doubtless . will exceed £400,000,000. For almost two years the stream of bullion has flown unceasingly into France. It first came from across the Channel, gold' being bought daily in London whenever sterling receded, and transported by air to Paris. About a year ago, after the Wall street crash, it started from New York. For the last month gold, frightened by the Nationalist victory in Germany, has been going there from the other side of , the Rhine. Since the German elections, September 14. the German Reichsbank has sold to the Banque de France £17,500,000 of gold- ingots. In less than two years France’s stock of bullion has increased 47 per cent., passing from £274,000,000 to almost £400,000,000. WORLD’S BEST STRONGHOLD. This richest treasury in Europe is hidden in the world’s best protected stronghold. Legends are current in Paris about the vaults-of the Bank of France, but the truth about them is scarcely less fantastic than a myth. Few people have been allowed to see them. The greatest secrecy surrounds the system of defence of the bank’s gold holdings. Never have the. vaults been described in the Paris press, but the New York Herald-Tribune correspondent was permitted to descend into them and see the yellow ingots of bullion neatly ranged on steel shelves. There they He in piles of five, every ingot weighing 12 kilos as required by tbe bank (26.41 b), and estimated at a price of 200,000 francs (£1569) to be sold to the bidder. But no bidders are to be found for them, and the stock continues to grow from day to day. 'lt would be no exaggeration to say that the Bank of France keeps its gold in a fortress. Bombs thrown on Paris from an aeroplane would never pass through the armour which protects the cellars, and in case of a revolution 1000 men, soldiers and bank employees, would be in a posi-tion-to stand an underground siege of at least a month. Every danger which might threaten the stock of gold has been foreseen and avoided by the engineers who some years ago built the vaults. Thev are buried under 96 feet of compact rock. Underneath and around, them flows the tamed stream of the subterranean river of the Grange Bateliere, which the engineers found on that spot when th6y began to dig. They decided to use it as a means of defence against possible undermining of the cellars. The water has been drained into an intricate system of canals that surround the waterproof walls. The access to the vaults reminds one of the defence organisation of a fort. The doors of steel and cement weigh eight tons each, and a mere twifefc of a, handler's sufficient to block them with an additional weight of 12 tons. There is a Turret A and a Turret B, a well with a winding staircase and lifts and long corridors built on the principle, which had been adoptee! during the war for the diggiryg of trenches. Even if a shell could penetrate through the roof of rock, it would be stopped from exploding on a large surface by the thick steel walls that form the angles of the passages. , Officials of the bank who show the vaults give the turrets and doors the military names of “ first and second lines of defence.”

: A part of the vaults is open to the public, at least to that part of the public who wish to rent a safe deposit for stocks or jewels. There are small coffers to be rented, steel rooms with tables, desks, and drawers, all made of metal steel and aluminium. Doubtless the conditions of security offered by the bank to a capitalist desirous of keeping bis bonds or stocks in a safe place are the best in the world. Bankers from New York and Chicago, who visited the vaults, admitted that nothing of the’kind existed either in America, or in England. *