But the payment of the first billion marks in gold caused the mark to depreciate one third in value. The Wirth Government seemed unable to raise more money. An attempt to borrow money abroad failed. In December the Government told the Reparations Commission that it could not pay the January and February instalments. The burden under which Germany was resting was the payment of two billion gold marks annually plus an amount equal to 26 per cent of her exports. In addition she had to face deliveries in kind, of which the most important was twenty million tons of coal per annum. She had to find the money to pay for this coal, and to buy coal abroad to make up her deficiency resulting from this loss plus her loss from the alienation of Upper Silesia. How the reparations crisis developed to the breaking-point, as a result of the developments of 1922, is related in another chapter. It is difficult, almost impossible, one must confess, to make a categorical statement or pass a definitive judgment upon the financial policy of successive German cabinets since the World War. In every discussion the assertion of what Germany might have done is based upon the assumption that there existed ability but not the will to do it. Just as on the Allied side reparations demands have never been based on an impartial expert estimate of German capacity to pay, and the Reparations Commission has been political and not judicial in all its decisions, on the German side the budget has not taken into account treaty obligations, and enormous sums seem to have been spent on railroads and other public work and on shipping. The industrial life of Germany was not harmed by the war. Her plants and mines remained intact. She was ready to resume business; and her industrialists succeeded, despite all the moral and political confusion related in this chapter, in keeping things going. There has been virtually no unemployment, no shutting down of factories and mines, no suspension of transportation service, in a word, no outward sign to indicate that the country was hard up and unable to pay reparations. On the other hand, one noted in Germany in 1922 an orgy of spending, a feverish industrial activity, and the incredible return to bustling prosperity of ports like Hamburg.[21] Export and import trade seemed to be thriving. In a dozen cities the Government and private concerns, principally banks, were undertaking extensive new building.