War is a Racket

[The Yankee]

A marine is a US soldier.

It's like saying someone was the AL batting champ, but didn't have the best average in the majors. General Butler was the most highly-decorated Marine, but not the highest-decorated in the entire US military.

 

[sabo]

Besides that Marines don't think they are soldiers, they are Marines.

 

[ParkCungHee]

He's actually telling the truth about that.

Not really, theres no evidence to back up his claims. I mean for gods sakes he's claiming that the funding for this "fascist" coup came from the American Liberty League.
Not to mention I find it highly unlikely that major business leaders would get together and decide to launch a coup aimed at bringing about radical state control of their businesses.
And if there really was any hint of a real coup, then there would have been prosecutions following the investigation.

 

[Bugfatty300]

OK, just to clear this up, there was a real conspiracy called the "business plot" which involved several major companies including US Steel, GM, Goodyear, and DuPont and several others. The goal was to assemble an army of 500,000 alienated WWI veterans and then march on DC, oust FDR and congress and insert an ultra-capitalist fascist government in his place.

The plan never made it past mere talk.

 

[DNK]

The plot aside, what did you think of the rest of the book? Is it well founded? Do you think it's still applicable today and why/not?

Considering picking this one up...

 

[JerichoHill]

It was a 1935 book. I doubt its applicable today

 

[DNK]

"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."

The summary would appear to make the subject seem fairly timeless. A few excerpts:

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

It does seem that much isn't relevant (a lot I didn't quote), and the economics/realities have changed, but a quick breeze through makes me think there's a least a little here that is still quite applicable, if not echoed, today.