War Is A Racket by Major General Smedley Butler

War Is A Racket by Major General Smedley Butler

• War is a racket. It always has been.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Who provides the profits--these nice little profits of 20, 100, 300, 1500, and 1800 per cent? We all pay them--in taxation.
• 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.
• 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 mass psychology, sans officers' aid and advice and sans nation-wide propaganda. We didn't need them anymore. 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.
• The tremendous excitement of the war, the sudden cutting off of that excitement--the young boys couldn't stand it.
• But don't forget--the soldier paid part of the dollars and cents bill too.
• In the Word War, we used propaganda to make the boys accept conscription. They were made to feel ashamed if they didn't join the army.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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 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!
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• And very little, if anything, has been accomplished to assure us that the World War was really the war to end all wars.
• 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.
• The chief aim of any power at any of these [disarmament] conferences has not been to achieve disarmament to prevent war but rather to get more armament for itself and less for nay potential foe.
• 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.
• Victory or defeat will be determined by the skill and ingenuity of our scientists.