Willard D. Straight and the Diplomacy of International Finance during the First World War.

This article highlights the career of William D. Straight, a U.S. banker-diplomat from New York City. Historians have differed as to whether the First World War was characterized by Anglo-American co-operation or by fierce competition, particularly in the economic sphere. Several, notably Burton I. Kaufman and Carl P. Parrini, have argued that during the war New York bankers were divided into two groups so far as international banking activities were concerned: those associated with the pre-eminent firm of J. P. Morgan & Co., whose partners favored financial and commercial Anglo-American co-operation on a global scale, and those working with the National City Bank, who preferred fierce competition with the British for export and overseas investment opportunities. Morgans concentrated on war financing for the Allies, while the National City Bank attempted to expand both its network of foreign branches and its overseas investments. Both economic strategies had their weakness: the expansion of United States's war-related commerce, while temporarily profitable, made the U.S. economy dangerously dependent upon business which was, by its very nature, transient; the National City Bank's Russian branches proved a complete loss when the Bolshevik government nationalized them in December 1917.