PLEASE NOTE: The actor delivering this speech is certainly NOT Butler, but uses his words.
At the time of his death in 1940, Butler was the most decorated Marine in U.S. history. During his 34-year career as a Marine, he participated in military actions in the Philippines, China, Central America and the Caribbean during the Banana Wars, and France in World War I. By the end of his career, he had received 16 medals, five for heroism. He is one of 19 men to twice receive the Medal of Honor, one of three to be awarded both the Marine Corps Brevet Medal and the Medal of Honor, and the ONLY marine to be awarded the Brevet Medal and two Medals of Honor, all for separate actions.
Now, you may want to dismiss this man as a "conspiracy theorist", but he has been exonerated of that long ago!
He is not the ONLY military figure who has tried to warn us! MANY have recently tried, and each has fallen from "grace", "re-assigned", forced into "early retirement", or SCANDALIZED, after decades of honorable service to this nation!
PRESIDENTS have tried to warn us as I wrote and showed in their own words in another blog.
Senators, many other people in HIGH office have tried and tried and tried!
Our FOUNDERS tried to warn the people back in the late 1700s, and from then until now, the ones who know best how to control public opinion have done just that!
They have demonized, shamed, ridiculed EVERY man or woman who has tried to warn us!
The people who control our media have learned well how to sway us in how we think, what we see as truth!
WHY THE SUDDEN PUSH TO CONTROL THIS INTERNET?
BECAUSE WITH THIS TOOL AT OUR DISPOSAL, WE HAVE EASY ACCESS TO EACH OTHER, TO EACH OTHER! IN MILLISECONDS WE CAN TRANSMIT OUR PRIVATE THOUGHTS AND WHAT WE SEE WITH OUR OWN EYES TO EACH OTHER!
WE CAN INFORM ONE ANOTHER!
He is not the ONLY military figure who has tried to warn us! MANY have recently tried, and each has fallen from "grace", "re-assigned", forced into "early retirement", or SCANDALIZED, after decades of honorable service to this nation!
PRESIDENTS have tried to warn us as I wrote and showed in their own words in another blog.
Senators, many other people in HIGH office have tried and tried and tried!
Our FOUNDERS tried to warn the people back in the late 1700s, and from then until now, the ones who know best how to control public opinion have done just that!
They have demonized, shamed, ridiculed EVERY man or woman who has tried to warn us!
The people who control our media have learned well how to sway us in how we think, what we see as truth!
WHY THE SUDDEN PUSH TO CONTROL THIS INTERNET?
BECAUSE WITH THIS TOOL AT OUR DISPOSAL, WE HAVE EASY ACCESS TO EACH OTHER, TO EACH OTHER! IN MILLISECONDS WE CAN TRANSMIT OUR PRIVATE THOUGHTS AND WHAT WE SEE WITH OUR OWN EYES TO EACH OTHER!
WE CAN INFORM ONE ANOTHER!
WE CAN SPREAD THE FACTS THAT HAVE SO LONG BEEN HIDDEN, THE TRUTH OF WHAT WE KNOW, WHAT WE WITNESS!
From the past, Butler's warning, his attempt to give us the facts he knew to be TRUE, to tell us what we can do to stop this:
<begin quote>
<<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 dug-out? 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 sabre 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.
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. They 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.
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.
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 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.
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."
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.
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.>>
THE WARS BASED ON LIES CONTINUE. THE UNDECLARED, ILLEGAL, SECRET WARS ALL OVER THIS GLOBE CONTINUE. WE ALLOW THE TRAITORS IN WASHINGTON TO INDISCRIMINATELY CHOOSE TARGETS, CALL IN STRIKES, TAKE OUT ANYONE THEY PLEASE, REMOVE MEN FROM POWER THAT OUT OUR OWN GOVERNMENT, BY CLANDESTINE, COVERT MEANS HELPED RISE TO POWER, ONLY TO BE REMOVED FROM POWER AS THEIR BENEFITS TO US CEASE. THEN WE PUT IN NEW TYRANTS, A NEW GROUP OF NATION-KILLERS, AND WE FUND THEM FOR YEARS.
IT'S THESE WARS THAT HAVE CREATED BILLIONAIRES "AT THE TOP" WHILE RUINING OUR ECONOMY AT EVERY OTHER LEVEL!
AMERICA IS BANKRUPTED BY WARS THAT COST US UNKNOWN TRILLIONS UPON TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS WE DON'T HAVE!
WE HAVE LOST PRECIOUS AMERICAN LIVES, OUR BEST, OUR VERY BEST, IN THESE WARS OF LIES!
NOT ONE OF THESE WARS, NOT ONE OF THE PLACES WE SENT OUR TROOPS TO WAS WORTH THE SWEAT OFF THE JOCKSTRAP OF ONE OF OUR SOLDIERS!
AMERICA IS DYING, OUR FINEST ARE DYING, ALL FOR THE SAKE OF MAKING THE RICH GET RICHER, AND THE POWERFUL GAIN MORE POWER!
HELP! HELP OUR NATION, HELP OUR TROOPS, HELP YOURSELVES, YOUR FAMILIES, THE REST OF US! SPREAD THE TRUTH! STAND UP TO THOSE YOU ELECTED, STAND UP TO THE OVAL OFFICE! THE U.S. PRESIDENT IS A MERE HIRELING, AMERICA! HE WAS PUT THERE BY "WE, THE PEOPLE", BY VOTE, AND WHOM WE PUT IN, WE, THE PEOPLE CAN REMOVE!
IT IS OUR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO VOICE DISSENT, TO DEMAND SATISFACTION FROM THOSE WE 'ELECT'!
WE 'HIRED' THEM ALL, AND WE CAN DAMN SURE FIRE THEM JUST AS WELL!
WE CAN RUN THE FAT-CAT LOBBYISTS OUT OF WASHINGTON!
WE CAN DEMAND THAT OUR CONGRESS TAKE BACK THE RIGHT TO PRINT MONEY, AND FIRE THE FEDERAL RESERVE, STOP THE FED FROM PRINTING FIAT MONEY THAT ISN'T MUCH MORE THAN TOILET PAPER!
HELP!!!
PLEASE, JUST HELP THIS NATION!
http://havacuppahemlock1.blogspot.com/2013/01/power-to-suspend-constitution-fema.html
ReplyDeletefound this
ReplyDeletehttp://rationalrevolution.net/war/major_general_smedley_butler_usm.htm
The transcript for the video speech is at the above site!
ReplyDeleteGood find.