Silver made a partial comeback in the first decade of the 20th century, such that the silver dollar coins of the Straits Settlements and silver peso coins of the Philippines had to be made smaller in size, and with a reduced silver content in order to prevent their silver value exceeding their recently established gold exchange value. An even larger rise in the price of silver after the First World War caused the Royal Mint in London to reduce the silver content of the sterling coinage. But silver never returned to the 15½:1 ratio of the first half of the 19th century, and the predominant long term trend was that silver continued to decline in value against gold. Nowadays the ratio in relation to the value of gold, although variable, is more of the order of 70:1.