(3 of 3)
"GoodWill & Fair Dealing." Impartial observers were particularly impressed by something which did not figure in despatches last week because it had nothing to do with the award. This something is Article 89 of the Concession and consists of a single sentence: "The parties base their relations with regard to this agreement on the principle of mutual good-will and fairdealing as well as on reasonable interpretation of the terms of the agreement."
In Moscow the statesmen of Soviet Russia presumably feel that in declaring the entire agreement and its arbitral structure void they acted in a spirit of goodwill, fairdealing and reasonable interpretation. Their principal overt grudge against Lena for the past several years has been that her mining camps were "centers of counterrevolution and nests of British spies"—a. charge frequently hurled in the Moscow press.
Russia's Gold. Irrespective of Lena's troubles, the paramount gold fact about Russia is that she ranks after South Africa, the U. S. and Canada as the world's fourth largest producer. Even in her year of reddest revolution (1918) she produced $12,000,000 in gold, and last year she reached an output of $24,000,000, nearly up to pre-War volume. Under Tsar Nicholas II the gold reserve of the Imperial Russian Bank was maintained at $800,000,000—twice that of the Bank of England. Today the gold reserve of the Soviet State Bank is $250,000,000.