Word: volpi
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...serious debtor and a smiling creditor-Count Giusseppi Volpi, Finance Minister of Italy and the Rt. Hon. Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill. Chancellor of the British Exchequer. A sleek, bearded Latin and an expansive, rubicund Briton. The most powerful self-made Italian industrialist, and the most genial onetime First Sea Lord of the British Admiralty. Such were the two completely antithetical statesmen who sat down to dicker over a settlement of the Anglo-Italian debt, in London, last week. What they said to each other naturally remained a diplomatic secret. But the two sets of public opinion between which they were...
There is small doubt that the time element worked in Count Volpi's favor, but there must have been other factors as well which enabled the Italian negotiator to convince Secretaries Mellon, Kellogg and Hoover and Senator Smoot as well that Italy deserved the terms she got-the most lenient which the U. S. has granted to any debtor nation, not excepting Belgium...
Several days after the agreement was made, when it had all been properly embodied in documentary black and white, Count Volpi set his signature to the agreement. Said Secretary Mellon: "Will you express to Premier Mussolini our appreciation of the character of the delegation which he sent to America and of the will to reach an agreement with which they were inspired...
...Count Volpi read a cablegram from Premier Mussolini: "Please convey to the members of the American Commission the expression of my gratification, voicing the sentiments of the Italian people...
Then Count Volpi presented a check for $199,466.34 in payment of the odd dollars and cents of the account, so that the total of the debt would come to a round $2,407,000,000. The Count presented another check which was not expected. It was for $5,000,000-the first annual installment of Italy's payments. Mr. Mellon protested that the agreement calling for the payment is not valid until approved by Congress and the Italian Parliament, and that the payment is not due until next June in any event...