[13] Recent experience everywhere seems to show that it is possible to inflate 100 per cent every three months without entirely killing the use of money in retail transactions, but that a greater rate of inflation than this can only be indulged in at the peril of total collapse. [14] The Soviet Government have always regarded monetary inflation quite frankly as an instrument of taxation, and have themselves calculated that the purchasing power secured to the State by this means has amounted in the past to the following sums: 1918 525 million gold roubles 1919 380 „ „ „ 1920 186 „ „ „ 1921 143 „ „ „ 1922 (Jan. to March) 58 „ „ „ or (say) £130,000,000 altogether. [15] So far the chervonetz has generally sold at a small premium, the rates being: March 15, 1923 ch. 1 = £1·07 April 17, 1923 ch. 1 = £1·05 June 15, 1923 ch. 1 = £0·94 July 27, 1923 ch. 1 = £1·05 The collapse of the currency in Germany which was the chief contributory cause to the fall of Dr. Cuno’s Government in August 1923, was due, not so much to taxing by inflation--for that had been going on for years--as to an increase in the _rate_ of inflation to a level almost prohibitive for daily transactions and quite destructive of the legal-tender money as a unit of account. We have seen that what concerns the use of money in the retail transactions of daily life is the _rate_ of depreciation, rather than the absolute amount of depreciation as compared with some earlier date.