>
>
> 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 -- who do not profit.
>
> http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html#c1