Central Committee for  

"War is a racket." Those are not our words. Those are the words of Marine Major General Smedley D. Butler - USMC Retired. One of only nineteen people who received the Medal of Honor TWICE.

Much of what he believed and wrote is as true today as it was in the 1930's [BEFORE WORLD WAR II] when he wrote his book. You be the judge....

• "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."

• "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 hungred per cent - the sky  is the limit...Uncle Sam has the money. Let's get it."

• "...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."

• "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 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."

• "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."

• "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.

• "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."

• "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 [1935], 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."

• "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."

WAR IS A RACKET LINKS: