On January 9 the Reparations Commission declared Germany in wilful default in 1922 coal deliveries by three votes to one. Sir John Bradbury cast the minority vote. The American observer, Roland W. Boyden, said that it would be easy for him to remain silent, but that he wanted to record his personal opinion. Germany, according to Mr. Boyden, had made “a very considerable effort in a very difficult matter and had attained a very large measure of success.” If he were making a report he would go further than simply to explain his reasons for believing Germany less culpable than she appeared in the matter of the particular defaults in question, and would explain that the conditions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles had been demonstrated by experience to be impossible. Moreover, he believed that that impossibility had affected not only Germany’s financial situation and her financial obligations to the Allies, but that “the continuation of these conditions had already resulted in great loss of money to the Allies and would result in still further loss so long as they were maintained.” The British and American point of view was not heeded. On January 10 the French and Belgian Governments, in a note to the German Government, announced their intention to “despatch to the Ruhr a mission of control composed of engineers and having the necessary power to supervise the acts of the Kohlensyndicat and to assure by virtue of orders given by its President either to the latter syndicate or to the German transport service strict application of the schedules fixed by the Reparations Commission and take all necessary measures for the payment of reparations.” The next day Germany protested to all the powers that had signed the Treaty of Versailles “against the oppression applied toward Germany in contradiction to the treaty and international law. The German Government does not intend to meet violence with violence nor to reply to the breach of the treaty with a withdrawal from the treaty.” On the same day President Ebert issued a manifesto, exhorting the inhabitants of the Ruhr Valley to remain calm, and declaring that “the execution of the peace treaty becomes an absolute impossibility, and at the same time the living conditions of the suffering German Nation are disorganized.”