BOOK REVIEW
BY MICHAEL A. MARTORELLI
Mellon vs. Churchill: The Untold Story of Treasury Titans at War By Jill Eicher Pegasus Books, 2025 368 pages $ 32.00
As is often the case for subtitles, the one for Mellon vs. Churchill: The Untold Story of Treasury Titans at War is exaggerated and only partially accurate. Jill Eicher has indeed uncovered some previously unpublished information about two financial leaders’ views on an important issue. From 1924 to 1927, US Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon and Great Britain’ s Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill frequently expressed their differences over the nature of more than $ 10 billion in loans the United States had granted its allies to finance their participation in World War I. Mellon continuously espoused the US government’ s position that the debts were valid and needed to be repaid. Churchill regularly voiced the opinion that those war debts should be forgiven. But those“ titans” only met a handful of times; and they may or may not have used one of those occasions to have any face-to-face discussions about their disagreement.
In 1924, Mellon accepted President Warren Harding’ s invitation to become Secretary of the Treasury. In his 48 years as a banker, businessman and industrialist, he had long been a supporter of conservative Republican causes and political figures. That same year, Churchill accepted the invitation of Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin to become Great Britain’ s Chancellor of the Exchequer. He had spent the previous 29 years as a British statesman, military officer and writer.
The backstory of the Mellon-Churchill dispute is important. Great Britain made its first request for a cancellation of all war debts in February 1920. Former Treasury Department official and independent researcher Eicher tells of Congress’ s creation in 1922 of the World War Foreign Debt Commission to negotiate revised repayment terms with all the European debtors. She tells how a sympathetic Mellon was quite involved in the Harding and Coolidge administrations’ efforts to adjust the terms of the debts they knew were hanging over the allies’ efforts to revive their post-war economies.
Eicher describes the negotiations that led to a revised loan agreement with Great Britain in June 1923. That new contract converted His Majesty’ s demand notes into a 62-year term loan at a lowered interest rate of 3.5 %. To blunt potential Senate opposition to additional agreements with even more lenient terms, Mellon reminded all those opposing additional adjustments that Belgium, France, Italy, et al. were not only the country’ s debtors, but also its best customers. Churchill had no role in those negotiations. But that did not stop him from using his pen and voice to express his displeasure with the proceedings.
The narrative picks up speed after November 1924, when Churchill used his new position as Chancellor to urge the United States to cancel its debts to his country, as well as the other allies. Throughout 1925, Mellon negotiated new debt repayment agreements with six other countries. Churchill was irritated when he learned that the United States had given many of them particularly lenient terms. In speeches and correspondence, he criticized the very idea of trying to collect“ war debts” on any terms. At the same time, Mellon and his Treasury Department colleagues used their interviews and speeches to assert the validity of the country’ s recollection efforts.
Eicher acknowledges the importance of the contemporary newspaper accounts she discovered in various archives to uncover details of both Mellon’ s and Churchill’ s statements and writings. She uses photographs of some front pages and quotations from the articles to buttress her assertion that their disagreement was widely publicized and discussed. Yet, that major cause célèbre was not fully revealed or discussed by their respective biographers.
While keeping her focus on the loan agreements, Eicher intersperses her narrative with commentary on issues such as changes in the make-up of Great Britain’ s government, reciprocal tariffs, German reparations and Mellon’ s European vacations. Some are distracting. Others provide further signals of the protagonists’ deep-seated views and add useful context to this informative deep dive into a“ sausage-making” process that rarely gets attention.
Michael A. Martorelli is a Director Emeritus at Fairmount Partners in Radnor, Pennsylvania, and a frequent contributor to Financial History. He received his MA in History from American Military University.
40 FINANCIAL HISTORY | Summer 2025 | www. MoAF. org