GERMANY’S WAR CHEST.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2465, 1 April 1909, Page 2

GERMANY’S WAR CHEST.

A CURIOUS TASK. A curious tas’k, typical of the petty thoroughness incidental to German ariiiiy methods, lias-just beeu completed at Spandau, near Berlin. This is the annual counting over, coin .by com, of the • “Kreigchatz,” or emergency war chest fund of £6,000,000, which ever since the war of 1870-71 has been hoarded in a- room in the J elms. Towei of that supposedly impregnable fortress The sum forms part of the indemnity of £200,000,000 extracted from France as the price of peace. Towards the close of each year it is carefully counted by a selected staff of non-commi.ssioned officers-. Their task occupies them ; a full week, starting, on the Monday morning and finishing on the following Saturday night. During this, period they are practically close prisoners, for they have to eat, sleep, and take what exercise - they' can within the; steel-cased walls of the treasure vault. , , At each counting the money is found to lose through wear and tear some four ounces in weight, equivalent to about £l4. This is carefully made up before the vault is closed for another yeai, m order that the sum total may always remain precisely the same. Of course, the wastefulness involved in keeping this huge sum lying idle is obvious. If it had been allov ed to giow at compound, interest, for instance, from the commencement, it would by now have more than trebled itself. But up to the present none of the many proposals made by different parties in the Reichstag to invest it or to convert it to immediate use have succeeded. Once, however, it . came within au. ace of being carried off by thieves. 4 lie prime mover in the audacious coup, which was of a semi-political character was a man named Reinsdorf, and more than fifty others were implicated. : The plot was discovered in the nick pt time, but Reinsdorf escaped only, however, to be hanged later on for attempting to blow- up with dynamite the national memorial, at Rudesheimon The occasion of its unveiling by the Emperor. ; .