Scrambled Booty

European property rights, deliberately scrambled by Nazi looters, will keep courts and lawyers busy for years after the war. The U.S. Government got a relatively simple taste of the problem last week when it tried to figure out what to do with a hoard of gold, foreign currency and art treasures captured by General Patton's Third Army in a German salt mine (TIME, April 16).

Basic rule: if it is militarily useful and workable, captured government property belongs to the government whose troops seize it. But, in 1943, the U.S. and 16 other United Nations promised to return any recovered German loot to the original owners. Some of the gold may have come from Belgium, Czechoslovakia. The Italians, who probably have no legal claim under the declaration, thought the cache might contain some of the 119-ton gold reserve filched from Rome by retreating Germans.

What about the French and Norwegian currency found in the mine? In effect, it will probably be impounded and held by the U.S. until the claims of French and Norwegian citizens can be presented and settled. Any remaining funds may revert to the U.S.

The Army put a guard on the mine, looked to Washington for instructions. Columnist H. I. Phillips' Army character, "Private Oscar Purkey," expressed G.I. sentiments: "There is more respeck being shown this gold than I ever seen shown human life in this war. . . . Nothing busts down a G.I.'s morale more than to think if he swims the Rhine, walks through fire and risks his life a hundred ways and then finds a lot of dough, he is just getting into a legal problem."

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