Smedley Darlington Butler

* Born: West Chester, Pa., July 30, 1881
* Educated: Haverford School
* Married: Ethel C. Peters, of Philadelphia, June 30, 1905
* Awarded two congressional medals of honor:
1. capture of Vera Cruz, Mexico, 1914
2. capture of Ft. Riviere, Haiti, 1917
* Distinguished service medal, 1919
* Major General - United States Marine Corps
* Retired Oct. 1, 1931
* On leave of absence to act as
director of Dept. of Safety, Philadelphia, 1932
* Lecturer -- 1930's
* Republican Candidate for Senate, 1932
* Died at Naval Hospital, Philadelphia, June 21, 1940
* For more information about Major General Butler,
contact the United States Marine Corps.

CHAPTER ONE

War Is A Racket

WAR is a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most
vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in
which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it
seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows
what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the
expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict.
At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United
States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in
their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their
tax returns no one knows.

How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them
dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-
infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights,
ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them
parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or
killed in battle?

Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious.
They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by
the few -- the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war.
The general public shoulders the bill.

And what is this bill?

This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones.
Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic
instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking
taxation for generations and generations.

For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a
racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now
that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I
must face it and speak out.

Again they are choosing sides. France and Russia met and agreed to stand
side by side. Italy and Austria hurried to make a similar agreement.
Poland and Germany cast sheep's eyes at each other, forgetting for the
nonce [one unique occasion], their dispute over the Polish Corridor.

The assassination of King Alexander of Jugoslavia [Yugoslavia]
complicated matters. Jugoslavia and Hungary, long bitter enemies, were
almost at each other's throats. Italy was ready to jump in. But France
was waiting. So was Czechoslovakia. All of them are looking ahead to war.
Not the people -- not those who fight and pay and die -- only those who
foment wars and remain safely at home to profit.

There are 40,000,000 men under arms in the world today, and our statesmen
and diplomats have the temerity to say that war is not in the making.

Hell's bells! Are these 40,000,000 men being trained to be dancers?

Not in Italy, to be sure. Premier Mussolini knows what they are being
trained for. He, at least, is frank enough to speak out. Only the other
day, Il Duce in "International Conciliation," the publication of the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said:

"And above all, Fascism, the more it considers and observes the
future and the development of humanity quite apart from political
considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the
utility of perpetual peace. . . . War alone brings up to its highest
tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the people
who have the courage to meet it."

Undoubtedly Mussolini means exactly what he says. His well-trained army,
his great fleet of planes, and even his navy are ready for war -- anxious
for it, apparently. His recent stand at the side of Hungary in the
latter's dispute with Jugoslavia showed that. And the hurried
mobilization of his troops on the Austrian border after the assassination
of Dollfuss showed it too. There are others in Europe too whose sabre
rattling presages war, sooner or later.

Herr Hitler, with his rearming Germany and his constant demands for more
and more arms, is an equal if not greater menace to peace. France only
recently increased the term of military service for its youth from a year
to eighteen months.

Yes, all over, nations are camping in their arms. The mad dogs of Europe
are on the loose. In the Orient the maneuvering is more adroit. Back in
1904, when Russia and Japan fought, we kicked out our old friends the
Russians and backed Japan. Then our very generous international bankers
were financing Japan. Now the trend is to poison us against the Japanese.
What does the "open door" policy to China mean to us? Our trade with
China is about $90,000,000 a year. Or the Philippine Islands? We have
spent about $600,000,000 in the Philippines in thirty-five years and we
(our bankers and industrialists and speculators) have private investments
there of less than $200,000,000.

Then, to save that China trade of about $90,000,000, or to protect these
private investments of less than $200,000,000 in the Philippines, we
would be all stirred up to hate Japan and go to war -- a war that might
well cost us tens of billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of lives
of Americans, and many more hundreds of thousands of physically maimed
and mentally unbalanced men.

Of course, for this loss, there would be a compensating profit --
fortunes would be made. Millions and billions of dollars would be piled
up. By a few. Munitions makers. Bankers. Ship builders. Manufacturers.
Meat packers. Speculators. They would fare well.

Yes, they are getting ready for another war. Why shouldn't they? It pays
high dividends.

But what does it profit the men who are killed? What does it profit their
mothers and sisters, their wives and their sweethearts? What does it
profit their children?

What does it profit anyone except the very few to whom war means huge
profits?

Yes, and what does it profit the nation?

Take our own case. Until 1898 we didn't own a bit of territory outside
the mainland of North America. At that time our national debt was a
little more than $1,000,000,000. Then we became "internationally minded."
We forgot, or shunted aside, the advice of the Father of our country. We
forgot George Washington's warning about "entangling alliances." We went
to war. We acquired outside territory. At the end of the World War
period, as a direct result of our fiddling in international affairs, our
national debt had jumped to over $25,000,000,000. Our total favorable
trade balance during the twenty-five-year period was about
$24,000,000,000. Therefore, on a purely bookkeeping basis, we ran a
little behind year for year, and that foreign trade might well have been
ours without the wars.

It would have been far cheaper (not to say safer) for the average
American who pays the bills to stay out of foreign entanglements. For a
very few this racket, like bootlegging and other underworld rackets,
brings fancy profits, but the cost of operations is always transferred to
the people