War is a racket by Smedley D. Butler

Author:Smedley D. Butler [Butler, Smedley D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Divulgación, Historia
Publisher: ePubLibre
Published: 1935-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

«All men are enamored of decorations… they positively hunger for them».

So by developing the Napoleonic system —the medal business— the government learned it could get soldiers for less money, because the boys liked to be decorated. Until the Civil War there were no medals. Then the Congressional Medal of Honor was handed out. It made enlistments easier. After the Civil War no new medals were issued until the Spanish-American War. 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.

But wait!

Half of that wage (just a little more than a riveter in a shipyard or a laborer in a munitions factory safe at home made in a day) was promptly taken from him to support his dependents, so that they would not become a charge upon his community. Then we made him pay what amounted to accident insurance —something the employer pays for in an enlightened state— and that cost him $6 a month. He had less than $9 a month left.

Then, the most crowning insolence of all —he was virtually blackjacked into paying for his own ammunition, clothing, and food by being made to buy Liberty Bonds. Most soldiers got no money at all on pay days.

We made them buy Liberty Bonds at $100 and then we bought them back —when they came back from the war and couldn’t find work— at $84 and $86. And the soldiers bought about $2.

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