War Is a Racket

by Smedley Darlington Butler

  And just so long will soldiers have to fight their own as well as their country’s battles. If there’s one thing the last year should have taught us, it is that legislation is never a permanent quantity. Just when it gets to the place where this country is doing the decent, fair, honorable thing by the men whose service and sacrifice have made this country what it is,—a new Congress will convene and start meddling with the statute books. They pick on the laws having to do with government aid for veterans.

  The Chip on Uncle Sam’s Shoulder

  as told to

  Barney Yanofsky (Undated)

  If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire.—Matthew xviii, 9.

  ---o---

  I refuse to accept the theory that war is inevitable.

  I believe it is stupid to assume that men must fight periodically as an outlet for pent-up hatreds and jealousies. I am not convinced the Creator gives his benign blessing to war as a means of ridding the world of its surplus population.

  I find it impossible to agree with militarists who preach the necessity of massive armaments in order to preserve peace. Nor do I have much patience with the pacifist who pretends to believe he can free the world from the scourge of war if people will simply refuse to bear arms under any circumstances.

  There are three classes of militarists in America. The first class includes the brass hats in the active military service, These men are naturally anxious to perpetuate their careers in the profession they have chosen. Expansion of the Army, Navy and Marine Corps automatically increases the prospect of promotions. In the regular service, the buck private aspires to the chevrons of a corporal, no corporal is happy until he becomes a sergeant, the sergeant is unhappy until he becomes a commissioned officer; the “second looie” yearns for bars of silver; the first lieutenant craves the double bars of a captain; the captain visualizes himself as a major; the major pines for the status of a colonel, and so on up the ladder of military success and bigger pay envelopes.

  The second class of militarists in this country is composed of bankers who specialize in foreign investments, owners of ships that travel the high seas, exporters who make their profits through world trade, the makers of munitions and those who deal in commodities the government always needs in tremendous quantities when it goes to war, such as cotton, oil and wheat. All of these have exclusively selfish objectives in view, and they want Uncle Sam ton have the biggest Army and the biggest Navy in the world to preserve their profits.

  The third group of militarists in this country represents honest and sincere patriotic citizens of the type who believe all they are told—without stopping to analyze the motives of the tellers. They are ordinary citizens whose homes are their most cherished possessions. Clever propaganda has convinced these misguided people that the lack of a huge national defense program is a direct threat to their individual homes. These people are convinced an enemy army in apt to swoop down on them any moment, set fire to their homes, murder their children and rape their women if Uncle Sam is unable to send a powerful fleet of battleships to the harbor of Timbuctoo, on the other side of the world.

  Just as some people have adopted the custom of shouting for the biggest Army and Navy in the world, as a profession, others have taken up the practice of preaching pacifism as a career. I have no sympathy with this group because it is content merely with preaching abstract theories that mean less than nothing to the honest soul who wants to work for peaces but doesn’t know what to do or how to do it.

  Compared to the professional militarist, the ultimate gaol of the sincere pacifist is more praiseworthy and righteous when he pleads wistfully for world peace. My condemnation of the pacifist is confined to those of his kind who make a personal profit through the dissemination of impractical philosophies that ignore the human element in the causes of war for fear of offending the sources of their contributions. I will never be convinced of the sincerity of these who profess a desire for peace for America, and the world, until they show gumption enough to go after these goals with the same practical methods a politician adopts to gain his objectives, or a shrewd business man employs in the promotion of his profits.

  If America hopes to force the idea of peace down the throats of other peoples, we must first demonstrate we can keep ourselves out of war. The dove of peace may seem to be hovering over the tables of international peaces conferences and discussions. But when diplomats, statesmen and politicians are gathered around those tables you can be sure the dove of peace is only a vulture in disguise.

  Every international peace conference that has ever bean held with the purpose of preserving the powerful relations of the major powers of the world has been a complete failure. They have failed because those who participate in these parleys are present only to map guarantees of protection for their mutual possessions and sources of revenue. They are profit-minded and not peace-minded. The subject of peace is only a smoke screen to shield their cagey maneuvers in the fields of diplomacy and international intrigue. Their peace pacts have been splendid instruments of harmony—until somebody started a war.

  Stripped of all camouflage, competition for world trade stands out as the cause of nearly every major war in the history of the United States and the world at large.

  In the term “world trade” I refer to international financial loans and credits, and the purchase of foreign bonds by investors, as well as the buying and selling of ordinary merchandise and commodities.

  Those who framed our Constitution were not unmindful of the profits to be made through trade with other countries. The story of the Colonies discloses that friction with England, the mother country, was first aggravated over the subject of free trade and the right of the Colonists to sell their wares to customers outside the British Empire.

  Back in 1775, America was desperately in need of the profits to be made from trading with the East Indies and European countries. In those days the sustenance of the Colonies depended upon our exchange of goods with other countries. Our forebears were still struggling with a wilderness, leasing in machinery and equipment that could produce many of the necessities of life and ordinary comforts.

  But even in those days we had prominent citizens who were amassing great fortunes as merchants and ship owner who were profiting from business negotiations abroad. You will find the names of some of these individuals who were engaged in this profitable business affixed to the Declaration of Independence at the time of its adoption.

  This was the are in which America adopted the policy that demands “freedom of the seas”—a phrase that was partially responsible for the Revolutionary War, and for every war the United States has had since them with another country. This “freedom of the seas” policy has been the chip on Uncle Sam’s shoulder ever since we found out we could lick even the British Empire if our shores are invaded.

  Since 1775, America has witnessed a tremendous rise and fall in its fight for world trade, Recent years have given birth to great strides of progress in other countries. The spread of education and enlightenment, the adoption of modern business methods, machinery and equipment designed to create volume production, has forced America to share its world trade business with other nations. Alarmed by their dependence upon America, these countries have contrived to make themselves nearly independent of commodities they formerly purchased from the United States. Others have adopted American business tricks in order to compete with and undersell Uncle Sam.

  The losses the United States has suffered in the field of world trade leave this country today a favorable trade balance of insignificant proportions. In 1937 we are exporting less than 10 percent of all we produce in the United States. In 1929, just before we felt the full effects of the depression, the value of our merchandise exports amounted to more than five billion dollars. In 1934, our merchandise exports dropped in value to hardly more than two billion dollars. In 1954, our merchandis
e exports dropped in value to hardly more than two billion dollars. In 1929, the value of our imports was approximately four and one-half billion dollars and, three years later, it amounted to about one and one-half billion dollars. Over a period of years our favorable trade balance has not amounted to more than approximately one-half billion dollars annually.

  In 1917, when our export business was nearly four times as great as it was in 1910, four years before the World War started in Europe, our exports were worth approximately six billion dollars and our imports nearly three billion dollars.

  In 1910, we had a favorable trade balance worth about 279 million dollars, which is indicative of the value of our world trade in years unaffected by war or economic depression.

  For the sake of argument, let us assume that three billion dollars worth of world trade was at stake in 1917 when Germany’s submarines threatened to throttle America’s foreign trade and take possession of the highways of the seven seas for the Fatherland in the event of a German victory.

  To save three billion dollars worth of world trade, plus the money invested in European securities, we jumped into a war which experts say to date has cost us at least fifty billion dollars in money alone, to say nothing of the lives that have been ruined or lost.

  We will still be paying for the World War for a generation or two to some and the final bill will probably amount to at least 100 billion dollars. All this sacrifice in dollars alone to protect a normal favorable trade balance of not more than one-half billion dollars and our “freedom of the seas” policy.

  America must face the cold brutal facts. The people must eventually decide whether or if we want to sacrifice our manhood on the field of battle, and struggle under the load of taxation that is created by wars, merely to save the business enterprises and profits of a handful of our citizens.

  World conditions have reached the point that forces America to lock elsewhere for revenues than the loan profits available in world trade. We can no longer hope to compete with countries in the Orient, and in Europe, where people will labor at back-breaking jobs for a mere pittance. Cheap labor costs in Europe, and in the Far East, are making it possible for our competitors in world trade to undersell the American manufacturer and merchant. South America can buy, from Japan or Europe, commodities at a price delivered to its own door step far more cheaply than the American manufacturer can sell these same commodities F.O.B. his own factory.

  There is nothing we can do about this situation unless we want to make peasants and slaves of the American working man, unless we want to destroy our high standard of living conditions in the United States, and renounce those principles of social justice we have adopted in order to place the American masses on a comparatively decent living plane.

  I am sure this thought is repulsive to the average American. The very suggestion we should reduce our standard of living in this country, in order to bid for world trade on equal terms with our competitors, is repugnant to every clear thinking, fair-minded, patriotic American citizen.

  With the realization this change in world trade conditions no longer justifies an international policy that commits us to war if a foreign power, involved in a war with some other country, interferes with our shipping, we should be ready to abandon that relic of the ancient past—our freedom of the seas policy. There is no longer either an economic or on humanitarian reason why this “sacred cow” of American traditions should not be led to the butcher’s block.

  Here then is the battleground for the militarist who insists he is only interested in preserving the peace and the pacifist who proclaims his desire to spread the doctrine of brotherly love.

  The constitution of the United States provides legal methods and means for any changes the people may so fit to make in its intents or purposes.

  If the sincere workers for peace will mobilize their forces in every community just as the practical politician does in every precinct, the legislators in every state will be quick to approve the necessary amendment to the Constitution of the United States. When a sufficient number of states approve this amendment to strike the “freedom of the seas” policy from the Constitution of the United States, the United States Congress will act accordingly.

  The legislators in the individual state legislatures, and members of the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, will respond to the will of the voters because the voters are their source of bread-and-butter.

  Those who honestly crave to keep America at peace must organize their adherents in every Congressional District. They must confine their activities to this one particular objective, untainted and unhampered by partisan politics, and both major political parties will eventually see the handwriting on the wall.

  If the preachers, the teachers, the editors and the orators who clamor for world peace will lend their efforts to this movement to keep America at peace, must organize their adherents in every Congressional District. They must confine their activities to this one particular objective, untainted and unhampered by partisan politics, and both major political parties will eventually see the handwriting on the wall.

  If the preachers, the teachers, the editors and the orators who clamor for world peace will lend their efforts to this movement to keep America at peace, then the ultimate objective of international harmony is not a vain delusion.

  Under this proposed amendment, we can retain our world trade—or what is left of it—without loss in times of pence. If a war should break out between two foreign countries, the private owners of American ships will know they sail the high seas at their own peril.

  If they land their ships for the transport of cargoes consigned to one of the belligerents, they will know the loss is exclusively theirs and that Uncle Sam is not obligated to go to war in their defense. We need never deny the sale of our commodities to any country that wants to buy these commodities on the docks of an American seaport. Admittedly, the situation is unfortunate for the small power that lacks adequate shipping facilities. But war and the wholesale slaughter of Americans on the field of battle would be extremely unfortunate for the United States.

  The banker or industrialist who still wants to invest his stockholders’ money in foreign enterprise can continue to do so. But he will know beforehand that no A.E.F. will be created to protect his overseas investments when war breaks out.

  The politician tells us this method of avoiding war will never be effective because the farmer, the cotton grower, the oil field worker and others will raise a storm of protest if denied the opportunity of profiting from high prices for their products in times of war. I grant this situation creates a difficult problem but it is not impossible of solution. The stabilization of marketing condition with steps to eliminate the “lean years” would help stamp out the cry for war-time profits. Moreover, America can consume all that it produces if all of its citizens are granted opportunities for a decent livelihood and the nation’s wealth is more fairly distributed among our under-privileged, underfed and underclothed millions.

  War is a cancerous infection. Like cancer it can be stamped out if treatment is timely. The doctor who wants to stamp out an infection will first seek the cause of irritation. When the irritation is stopped, the infection itself ceases to spread.

  Let us be the first to admit to the world that our greed for profits through world trade is an irritation to war we intend to remove. Let us resolve that henceforth the United States—as a nation—will confine the strength of its military forces strictly to protection against any invasion that threatens America—not merely to preserve the rights of the privileged few who make money in world trade—but the rights and the welfare, the happiness and the homes of all our citizens.

  War Is a Racket (Draft)

  Photo courtesy of the Butler family.

  Photo of a young Smedley Butler.

 

 

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