War Is a Racket

by Smedley Darlington Butler

  Obviously, the tremendous burden of taxation required by the federal government is the first result of a deficit in the federal treasury. Heavy taxation, far beyond the tax limits of the average individual income, creates a similar deficit in the bank accounts of the Americans people. If we can reduce taxes to the point where they should be, in proportion to our national income, we will release the brakes on the machine of national recovery and once again the wheels will turn under their own motive power.

  Unfortunately, Uncle Sam is hardly in a position to reduce taxes while his overhead expenses are still soaring to the heights. The government must have funds with which to function or it faces bankruptcy. Here is the point I seek to establish. The Americans people themselves are primarily to blame for the bills Uncle Sam is forced to meet today. Back in the days of easy money, we clamored for fine roads, elaborate public buildings, improved harbors, palatial post offices, federal subsidies for the development of aeronautics, and numerous other luxuries that our fancies or whims suggested. Much to our chagrins, we have discovered that these governmental favors and services must be paid for and maintained, even though surpluses become deficits and the national income is reduced by fifty percent. In other words, we, as individual citizens, have ignored the fundamental principle that the piper always wants his pay and that there is only one sure-fire method of keeping out of debt. Pay as you go!

  The fad of the moment is to blame congress for all the ills that beset the American people. Congress, as a group, is an abstract body and any orator can direct his shafts at the House of Representatives, or the United States Senate, without much fear of reprisals. Of course, this hardly applies to public officials, because members of congress are naturally resentful of criticism coming from any other individual who is also on the public payroll.

  I hold no particular brief for members of Congress, aside from the fact that they are ordinary human begins, endowed with the average amount of intelligence and the same impulses and instincts that motivate the thoughts of the average man or woman. The career of a Congress member after all, is no different than the career of any other business man. Every doctor, lawyer, professional soldier, merchant, farmer, and manufacturer is in reality a business man. Each is engaged in the business of earning a livelihood. Likewise, the art of being a politician is also a business. These men are selling their services as representatives of their constituents. If a majority of a Congress member’s constituents demand that he vote favorably on a pending appropriation bill, he can either set accordingly or to be prepared to return to civilian life. There are probably a few members in congress who are situated solely by an unselfish desire to serve the nation as a whole. But the rank and file of these men, most of whom are lawyers, have practically abandoned their private enterprises and have no other major source of income aside from their salaries as either senators or representatives.

  In other words, the politician is not the man to blame for our present terrific tax bill. He only favors an appropriation when he feels his supporters demand either his vote or his resignation. Politicians, including the man who hold public office in cities, countries, states—as well as those in congress—have only been doing what they have been forced to do by public sentiment and by the pressure exerted upon them by organized groups of voters. If the politician is guilty of a crime, he is guilty of doing exactly what thousands of others would do if they were in his position. He has been holding on to the only job he has.

  There are those who tell us that we can never achieve progress or development—either as a nation or as individuals—until we go into debt. I might agree with this theory, to some extent, but when this debt grows beyond the proportions of reason and sound economics, the theory falls of its own weight. Progress is futile if its benefits are not permanent.

  We—the people of American—must come to our sense. This is still the government of Abraham Lincoln’s day—of, by and for the people. America must go forward. American will go forward. But let us go forward with the deliberate knowledge that our foothold on the ladder of progress is secure. Let us practice as a nation, the good judgment and sound business principles, that each of us must adhere to as individuals if we wish to avoid financial ruin. We can achieve this through our own efforts if we will stop to remember that we are the ones who must pay the bill and that the luxuries and benefits of progress and development will never be permanently ours until we can pay for them with the cash in hand. Let us desist in our demands for appropriations from public funds until we have surpluses that will pay the costs.

  Business and industry can never prosper under the yoke of terminal taxes. Remove this yoke and the people themselves will be freed of the one big burden that creates poverty and unemployment.

  We can change, revise and modify our present system of taxation to our heart’s content. Personally, I am convinced that certain changes are absolutely essential. I have always held the opinion that those who derive the most from the benefits we enjoy, under our form of government, should contribute the most toward its maintenance. To be specific, I believe in graduated income taxation, inheritance taxes, gift taxes and an adequate levy of taxes on public utilities and those large corporations that would find it impossible to build up such surpluses in any other country. In other words, those who profit the most by government preferment, aid, federal tariffs and protective legislation should contribute the most toward paying the cost of government.

  In emergencies, Uncle Sam—as a private individual—should be able to mortgage his holdings or his accumulation of wealth. It is perfectly logical for Uncle Sam to borrow on his financial standing in order to weather the storm of a depression or any other economic crisis. At the same time, even during this borrowing process, Uncle Sam should take steps to pay back the money that is borrowed by tapping the great depositories of accumulated private wealth. We, as individuals, strive to leave this life without passing the burden of family debts to our children. Likewise, I believe that the federal government should conduct its economic affairs in away that will guarantee freedom of debt for the generations to come.

  My views on the subject of taxation should not be confused with those of politicians who preach “seek-the-rich” merely as a vote getting slogan. I refuse to abandon the principle that all of us, regardless of how rich or how poor we may be, are indebted to the government itself for certain benefits that all of us enjoy. Therefore, I believe that each should bear his proportionate share of the cost, based on his ability to pay and the size of his purse. And when this country is in the grip of distress, those who possess the greatest surpluses of wealth should be required to contribute the most toward wiping out existing deficits.

  However, revision of our tax system will by no means bring a complete solution to America’s problem. Our troubles will still be with us if we continue to ignore the basic principles of simple economics. No man has ever acquired prosperity and comfort by spending more than he earns. It is folly for us, as individuals, to think that the federal government can accomplish such feats of magic. Ruinous taxes will continue to be the underlying cause of unemployment, and a constant drain on the resources of business and industry, as long as the people of this country ignore the feat that none of us can ever hope to get something for nothing. We, the people, must foot every bill incurred by Uncle Sam. As long as we forget this obvious feat, and until we modify our demands upon the federal government, and public officials, in keeping with our ability to pay the cost involved, we can hope for nothing but continued distress and painful deficits.

  America’s Veteran Problem (1936)

  Peculiar though it may seem, it has taken us eighteen years to finally discover who won and lost the World War. The Allies may insist they were victorious in the “war-to-end-wars” and point to the Versailles Treaty as proof of Germany’s defeat. On the contrary, Germany has ignored the Versailles agreement with an arrogance reminiscent of Hohenzollern ambitions. Under Adolph Hitler, Germany has reconstructed its war machine and today that
country is as great a threat to world peace as it was prior to 1914.

  In recognition of the stark, brutal truth, we are forced to admit that the World War was a source of profit only to the ammunitions makers while the soldiers—the soldiers of Germany and Austria, as well as the soldiers of England, France and the United States—are the only ones who have suffered losses that can never be repaired.

  The men whom we mobilize into armies of robots, artificially imbued with a fierce desire for blood, not only lose out in the economic battle for self-preservation, but they lose step with civilization as a whole, even if they are lucky enough to come back with arms and legs intact. Men whom we train to be killers, in time of war, are never again the same individuals whom we draft from the fields, from the factories or the shops before they become human machines of war.

  When war was declared on April 6, 1917, we immediately proceeded to build “murder factories,” or cantonments, in all sections of the country. We took boys out of school, young men from behind counters and husky farm lads from the wheat fields, and placed them in the hands of professional soldier instructors in these various assembly plants. During the course of several weeks of rigorous training, we remolded these young Americans. With the tools of severe discipline, strict military supervision, soldier psychology and hate-provoking propaganda, we transformed four million lovable, easy-going American youths into grim-jawed, determined, blood-thirsty killers. They were carefully coached in the use of the bayonet and even told how to grunt and swear as they rushed at a helpless victim. Hard boiled sergeants showed these mild mannered youngsters how to withdrawn a bayonet from the body of a slain enemy with the least possible delay. A hob-nailed boot on the chest of a prostrate body, with a sharp, upward twist, they were told, would do the trick with neatness and dispatch.

  With the aid of liberty Bond orators, especially trained war department speakers and specialists in propaganda, we filled the minds of these young men with a loathing for the enemy. By the time they reached the front lines in France, after night long hikes and hungry marches in the rain and of Flanders, they knew the world was mad and they want mad with it. Then came the weary days and nights of scuttling back and forth in rain-filled trenches, sleeping in the slime and the muck of rat-infested dugouts, the constant fear of either a barrage from their own guns, or the guns of the enemy, ceaseless bombardments and deadly gas. Numbed with fright, their ears deafened by the constant roar of big guns, their nerves wrecked by the shock and concussion of exploding shells, these men caught in the cauldron of war, lost their youth almost over night.

  Finally, the Armistice brought this havoc to a conclusion. Man had spent his wrath and his strength. Even the professional soldiers who had lived their entire lives as disciples of the war gods were disheartened and soul weary.

  We brought these men back to America and shipped them to the cantonments nearest their homes. In less than sixty seconds after they received their final discharge, we again regarded them as civilians. Although they were given intensive training in the art of becoming killers, we gave them no help or training in their readjustment, mentally and psychologically, to the ways of peace. All too abruptly, Uncle Sam gave each of them an honorable discharge and a railroad ticket. We sent them back to their parents, and their loved ones, still dazed and numbed by the horror and chaos of war. There were no orators, no lecturers, no psychologists nor philosophers to help these men understand the transformation that had taken place within themselves, or the changes wrought by the war upon society as a whole. The vast majority of those who made up our armed forces, literacy tests revealed, were mentally incapable of making this diagnosis for themselves. They were young, provincial, unsophisticated and unsuspecting when they were taken from their homes. While they were gone they learned only one thing—the lust for blood.

  International bankers may have lost their investments, nations may have lost territories, great military figures may have lost their prestige, and civilians, of both the Allied countries and Germany, may have lost some sleep. But the man who battled with the elements at sea, or crept forward on their stomachs under a hail of bullets, suffered the only irreparable losses that wars create when they sacrificed their bodies, their normal outlook on life and their youth.

  Today we have more than a hundred government hospitals filled to capacity with those lads we sent back to civilian life following the Armistice. They are no longer boys in years but of the average age of 45. Mentally and physically, the great majority of them might as well be 60 and 70. Approximately 350,000 World War veterans are receiving help and care from the federal government in the form of compensation for disabilities that have interfered with complete rehabilitation. These men, however, compose only a small percentage of those two million overseas veterans whose shattered bodies and wrecked nervous systems are constant reminders of the experiences they underwent eighteen years ago. In addition to those drawing so-called pensions, there are more than 500,000 World War veterans suffering from disabilities that are either directly or indirectly traceable to their services in the A.E.F. but for whom the federal government has neither a sympathetic care nor a helping hand. This total is augmented as the passing years rob other veterans of their powers of resistance to disease and neurotic ailments.

  Immediately following the World War, the federal government discovered it was necessary to adopt certain rules and regulations in dealing with the disability problems of four million veterans. These rules and regulations, embodying certain general principles, have been applied to World War veterans as a whole and without regard to the individual veteran’s type or length of service.

  In the beginning, Uncle Sam decreed that every veteran entitled to disability compensation would have to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, through Army records and affidavits, that his disability was directly the result of his service. Officials responsible for these regulations undoubtedly felt the treasury of the United Status demanded such safeguards against fraud and deception. To a degree, they were right. Among four million human beings, it is only natural that a certain percentage will possess knavish instincts and cheating impulses. This holds true if these four million human beings are soldiers, bankers, lawyers, farmers,doctors or even ministers of the gospel. Segregate four million people in any section of the United Status and you are certain to find a similar percentage of thieves and forgers, murderers and crooks, income tax evaders and grafting public officials.

  In applying these strict rules and regulations to a group of men who were suddenly taken from their homes, crowded into the holds of ocean-going ships and rushed across the seas to a foreign country, where they were told to kill or be killed, there are certainly some grounds for tolerance and understanding, even at the sacrifice if economy. For about two years, our government naturally showed a desire in this direction. In 1930, Congress enacted a law known as the “Disability Compensation Act.” It was created for the aid and assistance of World War veterans unable to provide legal proof and testimony that would convince the federal government their disabilities were actually incurred while in the service. Those who conceived this humane act recognised that the bookkeeping facilities of the A.E.F. were far from perfect, that the A.E.F. was primarily concerned with winning the war and not with the maintenance of records and that the individual veteran was not to be blamed for the inefficiency of former plumbers, or cowboys, or butchers acting as company adjutants or field clerks. They recognized the fact that Companies and Divisions were moved from one point to another under cover of darkness. They recalled that sometimes for days these men were out of touch even with their food kitchens, and their munition supplies, to any nothing of their bookkeeping equipment.

  This law also took into consideration the fact that thousands of veterans suffered from hunger and exposure,in the cold and in the rain, in a way that left no immediate marks on their bodies. Any number of front line veterans will testify that they were not always warned of the presence of gas. The poisonous gasses let loose by the Germ
ans had a vicious habit of seeking low places. Many a doughboy suddenly jumped for cover and protestion into the pit of a shell hole, only to find it choked with gas, deadly in effect. At times these men caught only a whiff of these vaporous poisons—not enough to overcome them completely or force them to seek first aid. Instead, they sputtered and coughed, and kept on fighting. Many a veteran even refused to confess to a touch of gas for fear his comrades might question his courage, or suspect him of building up an alibi that might take him to safety in the rear. Others feared a trip to a field hospital would mean separation from the payroll and buddies who provided the last human link with what was left of civilization. Every A.E.F. veteran will recall the loneliness and hardships of soldiers who became annals, attached to strange outfits and perhaps forever separated from their own organized units.

  Back in 1917 and 1918, the man of the A.E.F. were healthy, vigorous and in the prime of life. If they came through a skirmish with their limbs in place, they felt sure their stamina would help them overcome the dangers of infection in a slight shrapnel wound or a whiff of gas. They preferred to beg for a dab of iodine, or a couple of C.C. pills, rather than risk losing the companionship of their own comrades.

  None of these youths ever suspected that advancing years would weaken resistance powers to shattered nerves or weakened lungs. If they did, it never occurred to them that Uncle Sam would some day say, “There is nothing on your service record to support your claim. We have no legal evidence, and no witnesses, to prove you inhaled this gas, or this growing infection in your leg is an old shrapnel wound.”