Smedley Butler Quotes

My interest is, my one hobby is, maintaining a democracy. If you get these 500,000 soldiers advocating anything smelling of Fascism, I am going to get 500,000 more and lick the hell out of you, and we will have a real war right at home.

One hundred and twenty Marines were detailed to officer a force of twenty-six hundred Haitians.

I had a swell racket. I was rewarded with honors, medals, promotions. l might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate a racket in three city districts. The Marines operated on three continents.

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.

We must take the profit out of war.

Only those who would be called upon to risk their lives for their country should have the privilege of voting to determine whether the nation should go to war.

For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it.

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 hundred per cent – the sky is the limit.

…Senate Doc. # 259. The 65th congress(:)…The coal companies made between 100% and 7,856% on their capital stock during the war (to end all wars, WWI). …The leather people sold your Uncle Sam hundreds of thousands of saddles for the calvary. But there wasn’t any calvary overseas!

…The war (WWI) cost your Uncle Sam $52 billion. $39 billion was expended in the actual war period. This expenditure yielded $16 billion in profits.

If only more of today’s military personnel would realize that they are being used by the owning elite’s as a publicly subsidized capitalist goon squad.

War like any other racket, pays high dividends to the very few. The cost of operations is always transferred to the people who do not profit.