when the National Bank of Sweden refused in 1918 to accept any
more of it from importing bankers, through fear that it would
cause ‘inflation’; when KorcHAK captured the treasure which the
Soviet had sent for safety from the Imperial Bank to Omsk, and
a railway accident littered the track and right of way with Russian
gold rubles which were never afterward accounted for. War has
always had a way of upsetting the dignity of the precious metals.
These occurrences of a few years ago seemed only another chapter
in the story of 1795, when the French revolutionary army overran
Holland and made for the gold reserve of the Bank of Amsterdam,
celebrated by Apam SmitE—only to find the bank’s vaults empty,
with no subsequent explanation of what had happened to their
contents.
“The $5,200,000 Soviet gold, now as effectively banned from
the United States as an immigrant of whose record Ellis Island dis-
approves, may be sent to London. The Bank of England has lately
been as short of gold as we have been surfeited with it, and no
awkward questions of title are likely to be asked. The London bank,
indeed, has been accepting Russian gold with the utmost cheerful
ness; as lately as last January it took in $5,000,000 of it without
demur. If sterling were to fall again, and London were by chance
to export some of this very Soviet gold to the United States, the
Department of Justice would not interfere. It would have become
respectable, or else its title would have been quietly merged with
that of the $7£0,000,000 other gold in the Bank of England’s vaults.”

l.os Angeles, Cal. Times, March 11, 1928
THE SOVIET SIBERIAN GOLD
“The mines of Siberia are yielding $25,000,000 annually for
the Russian soviet government and from this amount a considerable
sum is being used to establish a reserve for the state bank. Recently
$5,000,000 in gold bullion was received by two New York banks
to be held for the account of the Soviet State Bank at Moscow.
The Russian government is beginning to utilize the proved methods
of the world’s civilized nations and is using the gold of Siberia
to do it.
“Despite the fact that the Russian government has not been
recognized by the United States for reasons generally known If
this country and throughout the world, commerce between Russia