Speed Kings Read Online Free Page A

their education. Their father, in particular, tried to inculcate a strong set of values in his children. He was a Presbyterian, a staunch Republican, and had a furious work ethic, but instead of forcing them to adopt his beliefs wholesale, he urged them to develop inquiring, independent minds. Their father used to instigate debates at the dinner table. He’d ask one child to explain why it had been a good day and get the other to explain why, on the contrary, it had been a bad one. The next night they would swap roles. “Bill got his tremendous curiosity and drive from his father,” Peggy said. “They both wanted to learn about everything.”
    The twist of fate that would shape Billy’s life wasn’t brought about by his father, however, but by the work of his father’s boss, Dillon. At the very same time the Fiskes were up in Banff, Dillon’s work with the War Industries Board had taken him to France for the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. While there, he fixed on the idea of expanding his bank’s business into continental Europe. He settled on Germany. It was a bold decision, and one that would ultimately have horrendous consequences for both Dillon’s firm and the Fiske family. But in 1921, all Dillon saw was opportunity.
    The Germans made a first war reparations payment of $250 million in 1921 but were unable to make the second, of another $250 million, let alone the $500 million that was due in 1922. The economy collapsed, the currency with it, and so many new notes were printed that the German mark was soon worth less than the paper it was made of. By November 1923 you could get five million marks to the dollar. Brigadier Charles Dawes, director of the US Bureau of the Budget, concocted a repayment plan under which Germany would start paying annual reparations of $250 million, rising to $625 million within four years. The country would also get a new currency, the reichsmark, and a new German central bank, which would have a fifty-year monopoly on the issuance of paper money. Crucially, there would also be a foreign loan of $200 million to the German government. This was where the American banks, Dillon Read amongthem, stepped in. The loan was floated in Britain and the United States by a syndicate led by US banks J. P. Morgan and Dillon, Read & Co. For Dillon himself, this was just the opportunity he had been looking for. The loan was a preliminary step that would enable him to begin serious business in the German market. “Our opportunity lies in industrial Europe,” he told the
New York Times
. “The railroad and public utility financing that is to be done in Europe is tremendous . . . and lucrative.”
    Dillon, then, needed a man to head up his new European operation, which was to be based in Paris. He had hired Colonel James A. Logan, who had been involved with the Reparations Committee, because he felt Logan had excellent connections in France and Britain. But Logan was, in the words of Dillon’s biographer, “aggressive, and crude, and lacked the diplomacy needed.” Dillon required someone with finesse who was familiar with French culture and had a good grasp of the language. He chose William Meade Lindsley Fiske II. So, in 1924, the Fiske family moved to France. They sailed on the SS
Belgenland
in April, stayed for a time at the Hyde Park Hotel in London, then went on to Paris. They bought a house on the Avenue Bugeaud, and a little later a château in the south, just outside Biarritz.
    Billy’s father wasn’t exactly engaged in banking work as we understand it today. Dillon, Read & Co. were busy funding loans to Belgium, Italy, and Poland as well as to Germany, and much of his time was spent schmoozing with European aristocrats and diplomats. In the summer of 1924 he traveled with Dillon to Warsaw to negotiate with the Polish government over a $35 million loan. They were given use of their own personal train to travel to