Maverick Marine by Hans Schmidt

Author:Hans Schmidt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2014-03-02T16:00:00+00:00

12

Devil Dog and Demon Rum

SAN DIEGO

Smedley Butler, accompanied by his wife, three children, and journalist E.Z. “Dimmy” Dimitman, sailed from Brooklyn in late January 1926 on a twenty-six-day cruise to San Diego. Dimitman was to draft the serialized Philadelphia crime story, in which Butler told New York reporters he would be “brutally frank.” The trip was also intended to give Smedley a much-needed rest. A week and a half out he wrote his father, “The fever is gradually getting out of my blood and the two years nightmare becoming more and more indistinct, however a great hurt is still present and I imagine always will be and I now realize what a terrible mistake I made in ever getting into that awful mess.”1

The ship stopped in Colombia, giving him a chance to contrast Latin American mores, of which he had much previous experience, with his more recent insights into North American politics. Yankee smugness yielded to a more ironic view. He commented in a letter to Governor Pinchot that he was “amused to find their Municipal Officials have the same lofty ideals of public service as our Philadelphians, they are not quite as brazen in their methods and their list of prices is somewhat lower but really just in proportion to the value of their currency.” A Colombian official’s price, mentioned by an American contractor, “compared favorably with those prevailing in the Cradle of Liberty.” The ship also put in at Corinto which, like Panama, brought back memories of colonial light-infantry adventures.2

The thirty-part series, “Smashing Crime and Vice,” ran in over a hundred newspapers around the country. Butler donated 50 percent of the royalties to a fund for prosecuting politicians who interfered with the Philadelphia police force.3 Dimitman, who got the other half, corrected it in sessions with Smedley, Mrs. Butler, and their daughter. In conclusion the series recommended “a single, state-controlled force, organized somewhat along military lines” similar to the Pennsylvania State Constabulary, to replace all municipal police. Young men, “recruited from every section,” would be enlisted for four years during which they would be forbidden to marry. There would be constant shifting of units to prevent political liaisons. This general scheme, to which Butler remained attached and indeed personified for the next decade as a police consultant, public speaker and author, represented the militaristic extreme in contemporary law-and-order polemics. It amounted to an almost explicit domestic interventionism modeled after marine and army colonial constabularies overseas.4

The ship arrived in Los Angeles in late February and the Butlers were escorted to the marine base in San Diego, where Smedley assumed command. One of his first acts was to dismiss the personal orderly assigned to him; as always, he would shine his own shoes and brass. A remote and unimpressive post, San Diego was definitely a comedown from Quantico. Lejeune had made a special point of emphasizing growth potential in his bon voyage message: “The West Coast is gradually becoming the center of naval activity … and I believe that eventually

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