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| Unknown artist, Pennsylvania Art WPA (Art Institute of Chicago) Image: Posters for the People |
War is a Racket, Smedley Butler, 1935
Archer's book is short, yet contains a world of nearly lost history.
It's largely the story of General Smedley Butler. After a long and colorful career, the highly decorated Marine was known and admired by the general public of the 1930s. His fame brought many offers for public speaking, including radio broadcasts, and through these he reached a wide audience.
During his decades of service, Butler had come to question the motives for the foreign interventions in which he had played a role. Eager to warn against the country's being led into more wars, Butler used his public appearances to tell the truth about his Marine career.
Archer describes Butler's first antiwar speech—at a Connecticut American Legion convention—on August 21, 1931. What he had to say "stunned all who heard it or read it in the few papers that dared report it in part"—
I spent 33 years... being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism...Retiring from the Marines later that year, Butler embarked on extensive speaking tours around the country. He also toured veterans' hospitals, then wrote angrily of broken men who—
I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Bothers in 1909-1912. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1916. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City [Bank] boys to collect revenue in. I helped in the rape of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street...
In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested... I had... a swell racket. I was rewarded with honors, medals, promotions... I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate a racket in three cities. The Marines operated on three continents...
...don't even look like human beings. A careful study of their expressions is highly recommended as an aid to understanding the art of war.In the summer of 1932—after the Senate's rejection of the veterans' bonus bill—Butler was invited by the head of the VFW to address the 20,000 vets still camped in DC. This clip (from an unidentified documentary) has a bit of Butler's speech, at :44 seconds. (A worthwhile PBS documentary about the bonus march can also be seen, in parts 1, 2, and 3.)
After the military assault on the bonus marchers, lifelong Republican Butler campaigned for FDR. Butler publicly ridiculed conservatives for smearing "anyone who utters a progressive thought," and in Archer's words, "He branded Republican warnings that a Democratic victory would turn America socialist an absurd myth."
In one speech Butler called himself "a member of the Hoover for ex-President League because Hoover used gas on unarmed human beings." He also asserted that—
The bonus is an amount of money that the American people owe the soldier, but anybody demanding it is charged with lack of patriotism. During the war nobody charged the officers of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation or any of the other corporations who received enormous bonuses with "raiding the Treasury."Archer writes—
On November 8 Butler's choice for President won, and the House of Representatives went Democratic by a margin of three to one. A chorus of newspaper fury and frustration reflected the dismay of banking and industrial interests over Roosevelt's election.The day after his March 4 inauguration, Roosevelt declared a bank holiday and embargoed exportation of gold. During the "Hundred Days Congress" special session called by FDR, the main New Deal policies were enacted. Archer observes that
Less than three weeks before the President-elect's inauguration, an unsuccessful attempt was made to assassinate him at Miami. Could the assassin's bullet possibly have been negotiated for, Butler speculated, by a big-business cabal that hated Roosevelt and dreaded a New Deal?
As the American people stirred with new hope that at last the government was beginning to fight the nightmare Depression, Butler noted with satisfaction that the bankers and industrialists of the nation were horrified.Despite his outspokenness against corporate war profiteers and his support for Roosevelt, Butler's public stature and popularity with soldiers led to his being approached in July by Jerry MacGuire, a bond salesman for the Wall Street firm of Grayson M.-P. Murphy and Company. In numerous visits over several months, MacGuire tried to persuade Butler to front for a group of wealthy backers with ambitious plans for the country.
Early on, MacGuire tried to enlist Butler in delivering an American Legion convention speech calling for a return to the gold-standard. Under questioning, MacGuire revealed that a chief backer was his employer Murphy, a wealthy former colonel on the boards of directors of a Morgan bank, mining, tire and steel corporations, and a founder of the Legion. Murphy had underwritten that organization in 1919 for $125,000, out of a supposed desire to see soldiers "cared for"—
That was too much for Butler, who sardonically pointed out that the wealthy men had been using the Legion ever since to break strikes.Archer details the multiple visits—and the amounts of money MacGuire waved around. Butler was in Newark to address a Legion convention when MacGuire showed up at the general's hotel to demand his decision. When Butler tried to call MacGuire's bluff, the visitor pulled 18 thousand dollar bills from his pocket, tossing them on the bed for Butler to count.
...When Butler questioned Murphy's motive in wanting the gold-standard speech made at the convention, MacGuire explained that he and the other backers simply wanted to be sure that the veterans would be paid their bonus in sound gold-backed currency, not in "rubber money."
A startled Butler played for time, telling MacGuire he would negotiate only with principals. This led to a meeting with banker Robert S. Clark, whom Butler had known during the Boxer campaign in China—when Clark was nicknamed, "the millionaire lieutenant." After some probing, Clark admitted he was so worried about losing his 30 million dollar fortune, that he was willing to spend half to save the remainder—so terrified was he of Roosevelt's policies and so convinced that FDR could be made to realize his duties to his own social class.
After rejecting Clark's offer, Butler was bemused to read that a gold-standard resolution had indeed been introduced and passed at the Legion's Chicago convention. And despite all rebuffs, MacGuire continued pursuing him, until a few months' break beginning that December, as MacGuire left for Europe on behalf of his backers.
Butler stayed busy, touring the country with James Van Zandt, head of the VFW. That organization called for immediate payment of the promised bonus, plus disabled vets' compensation and widows' pensions. Butler told reporters—
So many former soldiers came to me with their pathetic stories that I bounced out of retirement. All we soldiers are asking is that the nation give us the same break that is being given the manufacturers, the bankers, the industrialists... Jimmie and I are going around the country trying to educate the soldiers out of the sucker class.In Atlanta, Butler made headlines for attacking bankers, as he told vets that war was "largely a matter of money. Bankers lend money to foreign countries and when they cannot repay the President sends Marines to get it... we can help get rid of [war] when we conscript capital along with men." Archer adds —
Ex-servicemen were made the butt of an Economy Act passed by Congress, Butler charged, because "the principle of taking care of soldiers is nothing at all but an old-age pension to which the nation eventually will come, and the bankers don't want it... If Charles Dawes got ninety million dollars for a sick bank, soldiers ought to get it for sick comrades."Butler pointed to the power of twenty million votes that veterans and their families represented, and warned them against believing "the propaganda capital circulates." He condemned the press as mostly controlled by capital, noting, "The paper that takes the part of the soldier loses advertising."
In April 1934 a Senate investigation into WWI arms profiteering began. Archer describes how
The Nye Committee produced shock waves by exposing the pressures exerted by the armament industry on the government to take America into that war. Oswald Garrison Villard, editor-publisher of The Nation, wrote, "I never dreamed that I should live to see the time when public opinion in the United States would be practically united in recognized that we were lied to and deceived into going to war... and when Congress would actually put a stop to those processes by which Wilson, House, Lansing, and J.P. Morgan and Company brought us into the war."Particularly striking was the testimony of the president of Bethlehem Steel, Eugene G. Grace, who
...
Following the hearings closely, Butler was tremendously impressed and influenced by their disclosures. They also confirmed his suspicions that big business—Standard Oil, United Fruit, the sugar trust, the big banks—had been behind most of the military interventions he had been ordered to lead. In a broadcast over Philadelphia radio station WCAU he described his experiences in "the raping of little nations to collect money for the big industries" that had large foreign investments.
... admitted that his corporation had received almost three million dollars in bonuses during World War I. He nervously expressed concern that such a revelation might "leave a bad taste" in the mouths of veterans who had served their country for a dollar a day, but nevertheless labeled their bonus movement an "unfortunate enterprise."Archer writes of
"Bethlehem Steel made ten times as much money during the war as before," Butler roared over WCAU, "and this band of pirates calls the soldier Treasury raiders!"
... a steadily rising chorus of hatred for "that cripple in the White House" by big-business leaders. It was reflected in the anti-Roosevelt slant of both news and editorials...Back from Europe that August, MacGuire insisted on meeting Butler, whom he now openly asked to lead a fascist group. MacGuire had spent months observing how veterans' groups had brought European fascists to power. In response to his findings, he said, his backers created a "superorganization," to be made public in a couple of weeks—
...Demagogues with apparently inexhausible funds for propaganda and agitation led "patriotic" crusades against Communists, Jews, and "Jewish bankers," who were alleged to be behind the New Deal.
That June [1934] Roosevelt further inflamed big business by a whole new series of New Deal acts that crippled stock speculation, set up watchdog agencies over the telephone, telegraph, and radio industries, stopped farm foreclosures, prevented employers from hindering unionization and compelled them to accept collective bargaining. As an epidemic of turbulent strikes broke out, the orchestration of Roosevelt hatred in the nation's press rose to a fresh crescendo.
...Butler was intrigued by the July, 1934, issue of Fortune... which devoted a whole edition to glorifying Italian fascism...
In September, 1934, the press announced the formation of a new organization, the American Liberty League, by discontented captains of industry and finance. They announced their objectives as "to combat radicalism, to teach the necessity of repect for the rights of persons and property, and generally to foster free enterprise."The officers and financiers included Grayson Murphy, Robert Clark, and the Morgan attorney whom MacGuire had named to Butler as the author of the gold-standard speech. Others involved included Mellons, Rockefellers, the Pew family (who would later finance the John Birch society and many other ultra-right causes). And two influential Democrats—Al Smith, and former party chair, John J. Raskob.
Denouncing the New Deal, they attacked Roosevelt for "fomenting class hatred" by using such terms as "unscrupulous money changers," "economic royalists," and "the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties."
Butler now approached a friendly editor at the Philadelphia Record, who assigned his star reporter, Paul Comly French, to "set about determining whether MacGuire and his group were operating some kind of racket to extort money out of the rich by selling them political gold bricks, or whether a cabal of rich men... was putting up big money to overthrow F.D.R. with a putsch."
And "gossip" going around DC was that the American Legion would "provide the nucleus of a Fascist Army that would seize the capital." John Spivak, a reporter expert in exposing American fascists, began his own investigation.
The McCormack-Dickstein Committee was the original House Un-American Activities Committee, and was then scrutinizing both fascist and communist activities. An investigator contacted Butler, who would, in a secret executive committee, testify to MacGuire's visits—and to being urged more than forty times to front a coup.
Reporter French appeared next, corroborating Butler, and adding much more. His investigation had included a two-hour meeting at the Grayson and Co. premises, during which MacGuire had openly told French, "We need a Fascist government in this country... to save the Nation from Communists who want to tear it down..."
MacGuire had described his fact-finding tour of Europe, saying he had seen both the role of veterans and the "solution" to unemployment. French testified—
He said that Roosevelt had muffed it terrifically, but that he had the plan. He had seen it in Europe. It was a plan that Hitler had used in putting all of the unemployed in labor camps or barracks—enforced labor. That would solve it overnight, and he said that when they got into power, that is what they would do...French also testified that MacGuire had implicated the Du Ponts as prepared to lend credit for arms and equipment. French's further statement—that MacGuire had named connections at Morgan and National City Bank as potential funders—would be censored from the official transcript.
Later the same day, MacGuire appeared before the Committee, denying the charges by Butler and French, and evading questions. Afterward, he told reporters that Butler's charges were a play for publicity, and "a pacifist stunt."
A New York Times article reported Butler's charges—then devoted most of the space to denials—and ridicule of Butler—by the powerful people he had implicated.
McCormack and Dickstein both announced plans for a thorough investigation, to include subpoenaing all persons Butler and French had named.
MacGuire was questioned a second, then a third time in September 1934. When the bank records ordered were produced, they corroborated Butler, although MacGuire perjured himself to deny it.
Near the end of November 1934 the Committee issued its report, supporting Butler's charges. No action was taken against MacGuire. His backers—whose names had been removed from the public transcript—were not called to testify. Most of the press ignored, distorted, or ridiculed the findings. The plot was portrayed as a laughable fantasy, and Butler as a nut.
In January 1935 reporter Spivak discovered a complete transcript, including all names implicated but later removed.
Butler railed on WCAU against suppression of the "most important" parts of his testimony, charging the Committee "stopped dead in its tracks when it got near the top."
Later that year, Butler would publish his brief book. He blasted the previous war's profiteers, both large and small—
Undershirts for soldiers cost 14c to make and Uncle Sam paid 30c to 40c each for them—a nice little profit for the undershirt manufacturer. And the stocking manufacturers and the cap manufacturers and the steel helmet manufacturers—all got theirs.In the decades since, our profiteers and their political allies have come up with newer and better schemes. Instead of a pesky Smedley Butler speaking out, we have TV-pundit retired military brass, promoting wars in which they have financial interests.
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.
And this is who has been sold as our most respected military man.
Our culture can't make the connection between our own history and where we now are as a society, much less how our history of foreign intervention has affected other parts of the world. Archer quotes Butler's observation that "We supervised elections in Haiti, and wherever we supervised them our candidate won." The U.S. is very much a force in the background to the ongoing devastation there. The history goes back before, during and since Smedley Butler's time; for example, this, this, and this.
The Republican press mocked Butler when he turned against foreign intervention. Although he faced increased censorship the more outspoken he became, there were other outlets for his voice. As he told the McCormack-Dickstein Committee, he had tried to alert the public because, "I have had so many invitations to head societies and to join societies, all of them with a camouflaged patriotic intent. They are rackets, all of them."
Our current rackets are everywhere, from a current version of the American Liberty League and its methods, to the vast platform provided to "populist" demagogues.
It's all the same scam, whether it's organizing 1930s veterans to rally for the gold-standard, or 2010 Medicare recipients to demonstrate against health care.
There were no consequences for the coup planners in 1935, which seems to have set the precedent for Democrats' silence about Republican treachery—for "the good of the country," and as cover for involvement of some elements of their own party. Ultimately, Democratic cover-up of Republican treason became completely entrenched, from Johnson to Clinton to Obama.
And in a particularly sickening way, we've come full circle here. In response to the New Deal, right-wing money began funding an echo chamber that is by now unchallenged enough to push a "liberals = fascists" story line against Democrats. Insane it may be—especially when one could wish more Dems were so much as "liberals." But it's when their targets don't stand up to them that bullies win.
