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Smedley D. Butler |
Background Note: Major ("2-Star")
General Smedley Butler was awarded two congressional Medals of
Honor, the highest award of the U.S. military. He received the
Army and Navy distinguished service medal. At the time
of his death, he was the highest decorated Marine in U.S.
history. He also foiled a plot in 1934 to violently
overthrow Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration.
To set the tone, here is one of Smedley's most
famous quotations made in 1935:
"I spent 33 years and four
months in active military service and during that period I
spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big
Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a
racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico
and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in
1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the
National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in
the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for
the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for
the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in
1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the
American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras
right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in
1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way
unmolested."
Below is a short book Butler authored in 1935
on the subject of war, "War is a Racket."
WAR IS A
RACKET
BY
SMEDLEY D. BUTLER
Major General, United States Marines
(RETIRED)
I. War is a Racket
II.
Who
Makes the Profits?
III.
Who
Pays the Bills?
IV.
How
to Smash This Racket!
V. TO HELL WITH
WAR!
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.
Top
CHAPTER TWO
WHO MAKES THE PROFITS?
The World War, rather our brief participation
in it, has cost the United States some $52,000,000,000. Figure
it out. That means $400 to every American man, woman, and
child. And we haven't paid the debt yet. We are paying it, our
children will pay it, and our children's children probably
still will be paying the cost of that war.
The normal profits of a business concern in the
United States are six, eight, ten, and sometimes twelve
percent. But war-time profits — ah! that is another matter —
twenty, sixty, one hundred, three hundred, and even eighteen
hundred per cent — the sky is the limit. All that traffic will
bear. Uncle Sam has the money. Let's get it.
Of course, it isn't put that crudely in war
time. It is dressed into speeches about patriotism, love of
country, and "we must all put our shoulders to the wheel," but
the profits jump and leap and skyrocket — and are safely
pocketed. Let's just take a few examples:
Take our friends the du Ponts, the powder
people — didn't one of them testify before a Senate committee
recently that their powder won the war? Or saved the world for
democracy? Or something? How did they do in the war? They were
a patriotic corporation. Well, the average earnings of the du
Ponts for the period 1910 to 1914 were $6,000,000 a year. It
wasn't much, but the du Ponts managed to get along on it. Now
let's look at their average yearly profit during the war
years, 1914 to 1918. Fifty-eight million dollars a year profit
we find! Nearly ten times that of normal times, and the
profits of normal times were pretty good. An increase in
profits of more than 950 per cent.
Take one of our little steel companies that
patriotically shunted aside the making of rails and girders
and bridges to manufacture war materials. Well, their
1910-1914 yearly earnings averaged $6,000,000. Then came the
war. And, like loyal citizens, Bethlehem Steel promptly turned
to munitions making. Did their profits jump — or did they let
Uncle Sam in for a bargain? Well, their 1914-1918 average was
$49,000,000 a year!
Or, let's take United States Steel. The normal
earnings during the five-year period prior to the war were
$105,000,000 a year. Not bad. Then along came the war and up
went the profits. The average yearly profit for the period
1914-1918 was $240,000,000. Not bad.
There you have some of the steel and powder
earnings. Let's look at something else. A little copper,
perhaps. That always does well in war times.
Anaconda, for instance. Average yearly earnings
during the pre-war years 1910-1914 of $10,000,000. During the
war years 1914-1918 profits leaped to $34,000,000 per year.
Or Utah Copper. Average of $5,000,000 per year
during the 1910-1914 period. Jumped to an average of
$21,000,000 yearly profits for the war period.
Let's group these five, with three smaller
companies. The total yearly average profits of the pre-war
period 1910-1914 were $137,480,000. Then along came the war.
The average yearly profits for this group skyrocketed to
$408,300,000.
A little increase in profits of approximately
200 per cent.
Does war pay? It paid them. But they aren't the
only ones. There are still others. Let's take leather.
For the three-year period before the war the
total profits of Central Leather Company were $3,500,000. That
was approximately $1,167,000 a year. Well, in 1916 Central
Leather returned a profit of $15,000,000, a small increase of
1,100 per cent. That's all. The General Chemical Company
averaged a profit for the three years before the war of a
little over $800,000 a year. Came the war, and the profits
jumped to $12,000,000. a leap of 1,400 per cent.
International Nickel Company — and you can't
have a war without nickel — showed an increase in profits from
a mere average of $4,000,000 a year to $73,000,000 yearly. Not
bad? An increase of more than 1,700 per cent.
American Sugar Refining Company averaged
$2,000,000 a year for the three years before the war. In 1916
a profit of $6,000,000 was recorded.
Listen to Senate Document No. 259. The
Sixty-Fifth Congress, reporting on corporate earnings and
government revenues. Considering the profits of 122 meat
packers, 153 cotton manufacturers, 299 garment makers, 49
steel plants, and 340 coal producers during the war. Profits
under 25 per cent were exceptional. For instance the coal
companies made between 100 per cent and 7,856 per cent on
their capital stock during the war. The Chicago packers
doubled and tripled their earnings.
And let us not forget the bankers who financed
the great war. If anyone had the cream of the profits it was
the bankers. Being partnerships rather than incorporated
organizations, they do not have to report to stockholders. And
their profits were as secret as they were immense. How the
bankers made their millions and their billions I do not know,
because those little secrets never become public — even before
a Senate investigatory body.
But here's how some of the other patriotic
industrialists and speculators chiseled their way into war
profits.
Take the shoe people. They like war. It brings
business with abnormal profits. They made huge profits on
sales abroad to our allies. Perhaps, like the munitions
manufacturers and armament makers, they also sold to the
enemy. For a dollar is a dollar whether it comes from Germany
or from France. But they did well by Uncle Sam too. For
instance, they sold Uncle Sam 35,000,000 pairs of hobnailed
service shoes. There were 4,000,000 soldiers. Eight pairs, and
more, to a soldier. My regiment during the war had only one
pair to a soldier. Some of these shoes probably are still in
existence. They were good shoes. But when the war was over
Uncle Sam has a matter of 25,000,000 pairs left over. Bought —
and paid for. Profits recorded and pocketed.
There was still lots of leather left. So the
leather people sold your Uncle Sam hundreds of thousands of
McClellan saddles for the cavalry. But there wasn't any
American cavalry overseas! Somebody had to get rid of this
leather, however. Somebody had to make a profit in it — so we
had a lot of McClellan saddles. And we probably have those
yet.
Also somebody had a lot of mosquito netting.
They sold your Uncle Sam 20,000,000 mosquito nets for the use
of the soldiers overseas. I suppose the boys were expected to
put it over them as they tried to sleep in muddy trenches —
one hand scratching cooties on their backs and the other
making passes at scurrying rats. Well, not one of these
mosquito nets ever got to France!
Anyhow, these thoughtful manufacturers wanted
to make sure that no soldier would be without his mosquito
net, so 40,000,000 additional yards of mosquito netting were
sold to Uncle Sam.
There were pretty good profits in mosquito
netting in those days, even if there were no mosquitoes in
France. I suppose, if the war had lasted just a little longer,
the enterprising mosquito netting manufacturers would have
sold your Uncle Sam a couple of consignments of mosquitoes to
plant in France so that more mosquito netting would be in
order.
Airplane and engine manufacturers felt they,
too, should get their just profits out of this war. Why not?
Everybody else was getting theirs. So $1,000,000,000 — count
them if you live long enough — was spent by Uncle Sam in
building airplane engines that never left the ground! Not one
plane, or motor, out of the billion dollars worth ordered,
ever got into a battle in France. Just the same the
manufacturers made their little profit of 30, 100, or perhaps
300 per cent.
Undershirts for soldiers cost 14¢ [cents] to
make and uncle Sam paid 30¢ to 40¢ each for them — a nice
little profit for the undershirt manufacturer. And the
stocking manufacturer and the uniform manufacturers and the
cap manufacturers and the steel helmet manufacturers — all got
theirs.
Why, when the war was over some 4,000,000 sets
of equipment — knapsacks and the things that go to fill them —
crammed warehouses on this side. Now they are being scrapped
because the regulations have changed the contents. But the
manufacturers collected their wartime profits on them — and
they will do it all over again the next time.
There were lots of brilliant ideas for profit
making during the war.
One very versatile patriot sold Uncle Sam
twelve dozen 48-inch wrenches. Oh, they were very nice
wrenches. The only trouble was that there was only one nut
ever made that was large enough for these wrenches. That is
the one that holds the turbines at Niagara Falls. Well, after
Uncle Sam had bought them and the manufacturer had pocketed
the profit, the wrenches were put on freight cars and shunted
all around the United States in an effort to find a use for
them. When the Armistice was signed it was indeed a sad blow
to the wrench manufacturer. He was just about to make some
nuts to fit the wrenches. Then he planned to sell these, too,
to your Uncle Sam.
Still another had the brilliant idea that
colonels shouldn't ride in automobiles, nor should they even
ride on horseback. One has probably seen a picture of Andy
Jackson riding in a buckboard. Well, some 6,000 buckboards
were sold to Uncle Sam for the use of colonels! Not one of
them was used. But the buckboard manufacturer got his war
profit.
The shipbuilders felt they should come in on
some of it, too. They built a lot of ships that made a lot of
profit. More than $3,000,000,000 worth. Some of the ships were
all right. But $635,000,000 worth of them were made of wood
and wouldn't float! The seams opened up — and they sank. We
paid for them, though. And somebody pocketed the profits.
It has been estimated by statisticians and
economists and researchers that the war cost your Uncle Sam
$52,000,000,000. Of this sum, $39,000,000,000 was expended in
the actual war itself. This expenditure yielded
$16,000,000,000 in profits. That is how the 21,000
billionaires and millionaires got that way. This
$16,000,000,000 profits is not to be sneezed at. It is quite a
tidy sum. And it went to a very few.
The Senate (Nye) committee probe of the
munitions industry and its wartime profits, despite its
sensational disclosures, hardly has scratched the surface.
Even so, it has had some effect. The State
Department has been studying "for some time" methods of
keeping out of war. The War Department suddenly decides it has
a wonderful plan to spring. The Administration names a
committee — with the War and Navy Departments ably represented
under the chairmanship of a Wall Street speculator — to limit
profits in war time. To what extent isn't suggested. Hmmm.
Possibly the profits of 300 and 600 and 1,600 per cent of
those who turned blood into gold in the World War would be
limited to some smaller figure.
Apparently, however, the plan does not call for
any limitation of losses — that is, the losses of those who
fight the war. As far as I have been able to ascertain there
is nothing in the scheme to limit a soldier to the loss of but
one eye, or one arm, or to limit his wounds to one or two or
three. Or to limit the loss of life.
There is nothing in this scheme, apparently,
that says not more than 12 per cent of a regiment shall be
wounded in battle, or that not more than 7 per cent in a
division shall be killed.
Of course, the committee cannot be bothered
with such trifling matters.
Top
CHAPTER THREE
WHO PAYS THE BILLS?
Who provides the profits — these nice little
profits of 20, 100, 300, 1,500 and 1,800 per cent? We all pay
them — in taxation. We paid the bankers their profits when we
bought Liberty Bonds at $100.00 and sold them back at $84 or
$86 to the bankers. These bankers collected $100 plus. It was
a simple manipulation. The bankers control the security marts.
It was easy for them to depress the price of these bonds. Then
all of us — the people — got frightened and sold the bonds at
$84 or $86. The bankers bought them. Then these same bankers
stimulated a boom and government bonds went to par — and
above. Then the bankers collected their profits.
But the soldier pays the biggest part of the
bill.
If you don't believe this, visit the American
cemeteries on the battlefields abroad. Or visit any of the
veteran's hospitals in the United States. On a tour of the
country, in the midst of which I am at the time of this
writing, I have visited eighteen government hospitals for
veterans. In them are a total of about 50,000 destroyed men —
men who were the pick of the nation eighteen years ago. The
very able chief surgeon at the government hospital; at
Milwaukee, where there are 3,800 of the living dead, told me
that mortality among veterans is three times as great as among
those who stayed at home.
Boys with a normal viewpoint were taken out of
the fields and offices and factories and classrooms and put
into the ranks. There they were remolded; they were made over;
they were made to "about face"; to regard murder as the order
of the day. They were put shoulder to shoulder and, through
mass psychology, they were entirely changed. We used them for
a couple of years and trained them to think nothing at all of
killing or of being killed.
Then, suddenly, we discharged them and told
them to make another "about face"! This time they had to do
their own readjustment, sans [without] mass psychology, sans
officers' aid and advice and sans nation-wide propaganda. We
didn't need them any more. So we scattered them about without
any "three-minute" or "Liberty Loan" speeches or parades.
Many, too many, of these fine young boys are eventually
destroyed, mentally, because they could not make that final
"about face" alone.
In the government hospital in Marion, Indiana,
1,800 of these boys are in pens! Five hundred of them in a
barracks with steel bars and wires all around outside the
buildings and on the porches. These already have been mentally
destroyed. These boys don't even look like human beings. Oh,
the looks on their faces! Physically, they are in good shape;
mentally, they are gone.
There are thousands and thousands of these
cases, and more and more are coming in all the time. The
tremendous excitement of the war, the sudden cutting off of
that excitement — the young boys couldn't stand it.
That's a part of the bill. So much for the dead
— they have paid their part of the war profits. So much for
the mentally and physically wounded — they are paying now
their share of the war profits. But the others paid, too —
they paid with heartbreaks when they tore themselves away from
their firesides and their families to don the uniform of Uncle
Sam — on which a profit had been made. They paid another part
in the training camps where they were regimented and drilled
while others took their jobs and their places in the lives of
their communities. The paid for it in the trenches where they
shot and were shot; where they were hungry for days at a time;
where they slept in the mud and the cold and in the rain —
with the moans and shrieks of the dying for a horrible
lullaby.
But don't forget — the soldier paid part of the
dollars and cents bill too.
Up to and including the Spanish-American War,
we had a prize system, and soldiers and sailors fought for
money. During the Civil War they were paid bonuses, in many
instances, before they went into service. The government, or
states, paid as high as $1,200 for an enlistment. In the
Spanish-American War they gave prize money. When we captured
any vessels, the soldiers all got their share — at least, they
were supposed to. Then it was found that we could reduce the
cost of wars by taking all the prize money and keeping it, but
conscripting [drafting] the soldier anyway. Then soldiers
couldn't bargain for their labor, Everyone else could bargain,
but the soldier couldn't.
Napoleon once said,
"All men are enamored of decorations...they
positively hunger for them."
So by developing the Napoleonic system — the
medal business — the government learned it could get soldiers
for less money, because the boys liked to be decorated. Until
the Civil War there were no medals. Then the Congressional
Medal of Honor was handed out. It made enlistments easier.
After the Civil War no new medals were issued until the
Spanish-American War.
In the World War, we used propaganda to make
the boys accept conscription. They were made to feel ashamed
if they didn't join the army.
So vicious was this war propaganda that even
God was brought into it. With few exceptions our clergymen
joined in the clamor to kill, kill, kill. To kill the Germans.
God is on our side...it is His will that the Germans be
killed.
And in Germany, the good pastors called upon
the Germans to kill the allies...to please the same God. That
was a part of the general propaganda, built up to make people
war conscious and murder conscious.
Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who
were sent out to die. This was the "war to end all wars." This
was the "war to make the world safe for democracy." No one
mentioned to them, as they marched away, that their going and
their dying would mean huge war profits. No one told these
American soldiers that they might be shot down by bullets made
by their own brothers here. No one told them that the ships on
which they were going to cross might be torpedoed by
submarines built with United States patents. They were just
told it was to be a "glorious adventure."
Thus, having stuffed patriotism down their
throats, it was decided to make them help pay for the war,
too. So, we gave them the large salary of $30 a month.
All they had to do for this munificent sum was
to leave their dear ones behind, give up their jobs, lie in
swampy trenches, eat canned willy (when they could get it) and
kill and kill and kill...and be killed.
But wait!
Half of that wage (just a little more than a
riveter in a shipyard or a laborer in a munitions factory safe
at home made in a day) was promptly taken from him to support
his dependents, so that they would not become a charge upon
his community. Then we made him pay what amounted to accident
insurance — something the employer pays for in an enlightened
state — and that cost him $6 a month. He had less than $9 a
month left.
Then, the most crowning insolence of all — he
was virtually blackjacked into paying for his own ammunition,
clothing, and food by being made to buy Liberty Bonds. Most
soldiers got no money at all on pay days.
We made them buy Liberty Bonds at $100 and then
we bought them back — when they came back from the war and
couldn't find work — at $84 and $86. And the soldiers bought
about $2,000,000,000 worth of these bonds!
Yes, the soldier pays the greater part of the
bill. His family pays too. They pay it in the same heart-break
that he does. As he suffers, they suffer. At nights, as he lay
in the trenches and watched shrapnel burst about him, they lay
home in their beds and tossed sleeplessly — his father, his
mother, his wife, his sisters, his brothers, his sons, and his
daughters.
When he returned home minus an eye, or minus a
leg or with his mind broken, they suffered too — as much as
and even sometimes more than he. Yes, and they, too,
contributed their dollars to the profits of the munitions
makers and bankers and shipbuilders and the manufacturers and
the speculators made. They, too, bought Liberty Bonds and
contributed to the profit of the bankers after the Armistice
in the hocus-pocus of manipulated Liberty Bond prices.
And even now the families of the wounded men
and of the mentally broken and those who never were able to
readjust themselves are still suffering and still paying.
Top
CHAPTER FOUR
HOW TO SMASH THIS RACKET!
WELL, it's a racket, all right.
A few profit — and the many pay. But there is a
way to stop it. You can't end it by disarmament conferences.
You can't eliminate it by peace parleys at Geneva.
Well-meaning but impractical groups can't wipe it out by
resolutions. It can be smashed effectively only by taking the
profit out of war.
The only way to smash this racket is to
conscript capital and industry and labor before the nations
manhood can be conscripted. One month before the Government
can conscript the young men of the nation — it must conscript
capital and industry and labor. Let the officers and the
directors and the high-powered executives of our armament
factories and our munitions makers and our shipbuilders and
our airplane builders and the manufacturers of all the other
things that provide profit in war time as well as the bankers
and the speculators, be conscripted — to get $30 a month, the
same wage as the lads in the trenches get.
Let the workers in these plants get the same
wages — all the workers, all presidents, all executives, all
directors, all managers, all bankers — yes, and all generals
and all admirals and all officers and all politicians and all
government office holders — everyone in the nation be
restricted to a total monthly income not to exceed that paid
to the soldier in the trenches!
Let all these kings and tycoons and masters of
business and all those workers in industry and all our
senators and governors and majors pay half of their monthly
$30 wage to their families and pay war risk insurance and buy
Liberty Bonds.
Why shouldn't they?
They aren't running any risk of being killed or
of having their bodies mangled or their minds shattered. They
aren't sleeping in muddy trenches. They aren't hungry. The
soldiers are!
Give capital and industry and labor thirty days
to think it over and you will find, by that time, there will
be no war. That will smash the war racket — that and nothing
else.
Maybe I am a little too optimistic. Capital
still has some say. So capital won't permit the taking of the
profit out of war until the people — those who do the
suffering and still pay the price — make up their minds that
those they elect to office shall do their bidding, and not
that of the profiteers.
Another step necessary in this fight to smash
the war racket is the limited plebiscite to determine whether
a war should be declared. A plebiscite not of all the voters
but merely of those who would be called upon to do the
fighting and dying. There wouldn't be very much sense in
having a 76-year-old president of a munitions factory or the
flat-footed head of an international banking firm or the
cross-eyed manager of a uniform manufacturing plant — all of
whom see visions of tremendous profits in the event of war —
voting on whether the nation should go to war or not. They
never would be called upon to shoulder arms — to sleep in a
trench and to be shot. Only those who would be called upon to
risk their lives for their country should have the privilege
of voting to determine whether the nation should go to war.
There is ample precedent for restricting the
voting to those affected. Many of our states have restrictions
on those permitted to vote. In most, it is necessary to be
able to read and write before you may vote. In some, you must
own property. It would be a simple matter each year for the
men coming of military age to register in their communities as
they did in the draft during the World War and be examined
physically. Those who could pass and who would therefore be
called upon to bear arms in the event of war would be eligible
to vote in a limited plebiscite. They should be the ones to
have the power to decide — and not a Congress few of whose
members are within the age limit and fewer still of whom are
in physical condition to bear arms. Only those who must suffer
should have the right to vote.
A third step in this business of smashing the
war racket is to make certain that our military forces are
truly forces for defense only.
At each session of Congress the question of
further naval appropriations comes up. The swivel-chair
admirals of Washington (and there are always a lot of them)
are very adroit lobbyists. And they are smart. They don't
shout that "We need a lot of battleships to war on this nation
or that nation." Oh no. First of all, they let it be known
that America is menaced by a great naval power. Almost any
day, these admirals will tell you, the great fleet of this
supposed enemy will strike suddenly and annihilate 125,000,000
people. Just like that. Then they begin to cry for a larger
navy. For what? To fight the enemy? Oh my, no. Oh, no. For
defense purposes only.
Then, incidentally, they announce maneuvers in
the Pacific. For defense. Uh, huh.
The Pacific is a great big ocean. We have a
tremendous coastline on the Pacific. Will the maneuvers be off
the coast, two or three hundred miles? Oh, no. The maneuvers
will be two thousand, yes, perhaps even thirty-five hundred
miles, off the coast.
The Japanese, a proud people, of course will be
pleased beyond expression to see the united States fleet so
close to Nippon's shores. Even as pleased as would be the
residents of California were they to dimly discern through the
morning mist, the Japanese fleet playing at war games off Los
Angeles.
The ships of our navy, it can be seen, should
be specifically limited, by law, to within 200 miles of our
coastline. Had that been the law in 1898 the Maine would never
have gone to Havana Harbor. She never would have been blown
up. There would have been no war with Spain with its attendant
loss of life. Two hundred miles is ample, in the opinion of
experts, for defense purposes. Our nation cannot start an
offensive war if its ships can't go further than 200 miles
from the coastline. Planes might be permitted to go as far as
500 miles from the coast for purposes of reconnaissance. And
the army should never leave the territorial limits of our
nation.
To summarize: Three steps must be taken to
smash the war racket.
We must take the profit out of war.
We must permit the youth of the land who would
bear arms to decide whether or not there should be war.
We must limit our military forces to home
defense purposes.
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CHAPTER FIVE
TO HELL WITH WAR!
I am not a fool as to believe that war is a
thing of the past. I know the people do not want war, but
there is no use in saying we cannot be pushed into another
war.
Looking back, Woodrow Wilson was re-elected
president in 1916 on a platform that he had "kept us out of
war" and on the implied promise that he would "keep us out of
war." Yet, five months later he asked Congress to declare war
on Germany.
In that five-month interval the people had not
been asked whether they had changed their minds. The 4,000,000
young men who put on uniforms and marched or sailed away were
not asked whether they wanted to go forth to suffer and die.
Then what caused our government to change its
mind so suddenly?
Money.
An allied commission, it may be recalled, came
over shortly before the war declaration and called on the
President. The President summoned a group of advisers. The
head of the commission spoke. Stripped of its diplomatic
language, this is what he told the President and his group:
"There is no use kidding ourselves any
longer. The cause of the allies is lost. We now owe you
(American bankers, American munitions makers, American
manufacturers, American speculators, American exporters)
five or six billion dollars.
["]If we lose (and without the help of the
United States we must lose) we, England, France and Italy,
cannot pay back this money...and Germany won't.
["]So..."
Had secrecy been outlawed as far as war
negotiations were concerned, and had the press been invited to
be present at that conference, or had radio been available to
broadcast the proceedings, America never would have entered
the World War. But this conference, like all war discussions,
was shrouded in utmost secrecy. When our boys were sent off to
war they were told it was a "war to make the world safe for
democracy" and a "war to end all wars."
Well, eighteen years after, the world has less
of democracy than it had then. Besides, what business is it of
ours whether Russia or Germany or England or France or Italy
or Austria live under democracies or monarchies? Whether they
are Fascists or Communists? Our problem is to preserve our own
democracy.
And very little, if anything, has been
accomplished to assure us that the World War was really the
war to end all wars.
Yes, we have had disarmament conferences and
limitations of arms conferences. They don't mean a thing. One
has just failed; the results of another have been nullified.
We send our professional soldiers and our sailors and our
politicians and our diplomats to these conferences. And what
happens?
The professional soldiers and sailors don't
want to disarm. No admiral wants to be without a ship. No
general wants to be without a command. Both mean men without
jobs. They are not for disarmament. They cannot be for
limitations of arms. And at all these conferences, lurking in
the background but all-powerful, just the same, are the
sinister agents of those who profit by war. They see to it
that these conferences do not disarm or seriously limit
armaments.
The chief aim of any power at any of these
conferences has not been to achieve disarmament to prevent war
but rather to get more armament for itself and less for any
potential foe.
There is only one way to disarm with any
semblance of practicability. That is for all nations to get
together and scrap every ship, every gun, every rifle, every
tank, every war plane. Even this, if it were possible, would
not be enough.
The next war, according to experts, will be
fought not with battleships, not by artillery, not with rifles
and not with machine guns. It will be fought with deadly
chemicals and gases.
Secretly each nation is studying and perfecting
newer and ghastlier means of annihilating its foes wholesale.
Yes, ships will continue to be built, for the shipbuilders
must make their profits. And guns still will be manufactured
and powder and rifles will be made, for the munitions makers
must make their huge profits. And the soldiers, of course,
must wear uniforms, for the manufacturer must make their war
profits too.
But victory or defeat will be determined by the
skill and ingenuity of our scientists.
If we put them to work making poison gas and
more and more fiendish mechanical and explosive instruments of
destruction, they will have no time for the constructive job
of building greater prosperity for all peoples. By putting
them to this useful job, we can all make more money out of
peace than we can out of war — even the munitions makers.
So...I say, TO HELL WITH WAR!
[End of Book.]
Note: This book can also be found elsewhere on
the Internet at
Veterans for Peace and
Lexrex.com. See the
actual facsimiles of the first pages.
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