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Hone Page
Nathan Hale. Americas first spy Amendment VI
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the
right to a speedy and
public trial, by an
impartial jury
of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed,
which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be
informed of the nature and cause of the accusation;
to be
confronted with the witnesses against him; to
have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor,
and to have the
Assistance of Counsel for his defence.
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WAR IS A RACKET
-By Marine General
Smedley Butler
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 dugout? 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 saber 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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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