[55] Incidentally the Wiesbaden Agreement sets up a fairer procedure for fixing the prices of supplies in kind than that contemplated in the Treaty. According to the Treaty the prices are fixed at the sole discretion of the Reparation Commission. In the Wiesbaden Agreement this duty is assigned to an Arbitral Commission consisting of a German representative, a French representative, and an impartial third who are to fix the prices, broadly speaking, on the basis of price existing in France in each quarterly period subject to this price being not more than 5 per cent below the German price. [56] See Appendix No. 8. [57] I return to the theoretical aspects of this question in Chapter VI. [58] Any one, who can fully persuade himself of the unalterable truth of the proposition that _every day_ the sales of exchange must exactly equal the purchases, will have gone a long way towards understanding the secret of the exchanges. [59] Furthermore, every improvement in the value of the mark increases the real burden of what Germany owes to foreign holders of marks and also the real burden of the Public Debt on the Exchequer. A rate of exchange exceeding 400 marks to the dollar has at least this advantage that it has reduced these two burdens to very moderate dimensions. CHAPTER IV THE REPARATION BILL The Treaty of Versailles specified the classes of damage in respect of which Germany was to pay Reparation. It made no attempt to assess the amount of this damage. This duty was assigned to the Reparation Commission, who were instructed to notify their assessment to the German Government on or before May 1, 1921. An attempt was made during the Peace Conference to agree to a figure there and then for insertion in the Treaty. The American delegates in particular favored this course. But an agreement could not be reached. There was no reasonable figure which was not seriously inadequate to popular expectations in France and the British Empire.[60] The highest figure to which the Americans would agree, namely, 140 milliard gold marks, was, as we shall see later, not much above the eventual assessment of the Reparation Commission; the lowest figure to which France and Great Britain would agree, namely, 180 milliard gold marks, was, as it has turned out, much above the amount to which they were entitled even under their own categories of claim.[61] Between the date of the Treaty and the announcement of its decision by the Reparation Commission, there was much controversy as to what this amount should be. I propose to review some of the details of this problem, because, if men are in any way actuated by veracity in international affairs, a just opinion about it is still relevant to the Reparation problem.