Rheingoldbricks

Rheingold! Rarest gold!

How pure and bright once didst thou

beam on us!

For thee, O pure one, now we mourn.

Return the gold, O return the pure gold

to us! . . .

Now it is gone to the depths:

False and cowardly are those who laugh

now above!

--Wagner

The Russians last week wailed like so many wronged Rhine nymphs. The Central State Pawnshop of the Soviet Purchasing Commission had bought gold bullion in Berlin--50 million marks' worth of nice, shiny gold for the depleted Soviet treasury. Last week, a frantic message came from Moscow: the gold was phony! Investigation showed that Germans (among them many D.P.s) had operated an illegal smelter in Berlin, casting a base alloy with a thin gold coating into small "gold" bricks. This week, the Russian assayers who had permitted themselves to be fooled were in jail.

The Russians could take some small comfort from the fact that the German alchemists had not made out as well as it seemed. They had sold the "gold" on credit, and the Russians had fallen far behind with their payments.

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