>From "War is a Racket" by Major General Smedley D. Butler, USMC,
Twice decorated with Medal of Honor:
"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 nation's 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 steel companies and our munitions makers
and our shipbuilders and the manufacturers of all the other
things that provide profit in war time as well as the
bankers and 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 mayors pay half their monthly $30 wage to
their families and pay war risk insurance and buy Liberty
Bonds.
Why shouldn't they?
They aren't running the 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 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 a limited plebiscite to determine whether 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 the dying. There wouldn't be very much sense in having
the 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 rsik their lives for their country should have the
privilege of voting to determine whether the nation should
go to war. "
Jim Craven
*------------------------------------------------------------------*
* James Craven * " For those who have fought for it, *
* Dept of Economics * freedom has a taste the protected *
* Clark College * will never know." *
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