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Ralphs. Fresh for everyone. Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now, while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less. My name is Joshua Sheets. I am your host.

And today on the show, I want to talk with you about one of those big-picture financial topics. It's not about personal finance. It is, however, about how the world works. And I think it's important that you and I pay attention to these things when they come across our desks.

I watched today on Twitter, I watched a comment from Senator McConnell, the United States Senator, a comment that he made here on Twitter. I want to read it to you. Published September 7, 2023 at 1044 AM from Leader McConnell in the United States Senate. Quote, "Standing with our allies against Russian aggression isn't charity.

In fact, it's a direct investment in replenishing America's arsenal with American weapons built by American workers. Expanding our defense industrial base puts America in a stronger position to out-compete China." Now, this particular Twitter comment to me is rather shocking because it seems like a textbook example of what we sometimes refer to as saying the quiet part out loud.

And I thought, you know, there is a very important essay that I have thought about for many years, read many years ago, probably reread it at least every couple of years or so. I've talked about it on the show, but I've never read to you. And I believe this is one of the more useful essays for you to have in the back of your mind.

You see, current events are hard to parse through. They're confusing, hard to figure out, etc. But sometimes you can look back at history and by seeing what has happened in history, you can understand your present day a little bit more clearly. The essay I want to read you is called War is a Racket.

This is a fairly well-known essay by Major General Smedley Butler, a long ago retired United States Marine Corps Major General. And what is interesting about General Butler, Major General Butler, is that he is one of those men who was incredibly decorated, very highly placed in the overall military. Reading from his Wikipedia entry, Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, July 30, 1881 to June 21, 1940, nicknamed the Maverick Marine, was a senior United States Marine Corps officer.

During his 34-year career, he fought in the Philippine-American War, the Boxer Rebellion, the Mexican Revolution, and World War I. At the time of his death, Butler was the most decorated Marine in U.S. history. By the end of his career, so I repeat that in case you missed it, at the time of his death, Butler was the most decorated Marine in U.S.

history. By the end of his career, Butler had received 16 medals, including five for heroism. He is the only Marine to be awarded the Brevet Medal, as well as two Medals of Honor, all for separate actions. In 1933, I'll skip the other controversies, after Butler retired from the military, he became well-known for giving a speech and for a pamphlet that he wrote called "War is a Racket." It's a speech in a 1935 short book that he wrote and published, and it talks about what war is.

And without further ado, let me just read this to you so that you understand. And I want you to have Leader McConnell's tweet in the back of your mind as I read this to you. Chapter one, "War is a Racket." 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. In the World War, meaning of course World War I, in the World War, a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War.

That many admitted their huge blood games in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns? No one knows. How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dugout?

How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle? Out of war, nations acquire additional territory if they are victorious. They just take it.

This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few. The selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill. And what is this bill? This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones, mangled bodies, shattered minds, broken hearts and homes. Economic instability, depression and all its attendant miseries.

Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations. 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. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering as they are today, I must face it and speak out.

Again, they are choosing sides. France and Russia met and agreed to stand side by side. Italy and Austria hurried to make a similar agreement. Poland and Germany cast sheep's eyes at each other, forgetting for the nonce, meaning one unique occasion, their dispute over the Polish corridor. The assassination of King Alexander of Yugoslavia complicated matters.

Yugoslavia and Hungary, long bitter enemies, were almost at each other's throats. Italy was ready to jump in, but France was waiting. So was Czechoslovakia. All of them are looking ahead to war. Not the people, not those who fight and pay and die. Only those who foment wars and remain safely at home to profit.

There are 40 million men under arms in the world today, and our statesmen and diplomats have the temerity to say that war is not in the making. Hell's bells. Are these 40 million men being trained to be dancers? Not in Italy, to be sure. Premier Mussolini knows what they are being trained for.

He at least is frank enough to speak out. Only the other day, Il Duche in International Conciliation, the publication of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said, "And above all, fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity, quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace.

War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the people who have the courage to meet it." Undoubtedly, Mussolini means exactly what he says. His well-trained army, his great fleet of planes, and even his navy are ready for war. Anxious for it, apparently.

His recent stand at the side of Hungary and the latter's dispute with Yugoslavia showed that. And the hurried mobilization of his troops on the Austrian border after the assassination of Dolfuss showed it too. There are others in Europe too whose saber-rattling presages war sooner or later. Herr Hitler, with his rearming Germany and his constant demands for more and more arms, is an equal, if not greater, menace to peace.

France only recently increased the term of military service for its youth from a year to 18 months. Yes, all over, nations are camping in their arms. The mad dogs of Europe are on the loose. In the Orient, the maneuvering is more adroit. Back in 1904, when Russia and Japan fought, we kicked out our old friends the Russians and backed Japan.

Then our very generous international bankers were financing Japan. Now the trend is to poison us against the Japanese. What does the "open door" policy to China mean to us? Our trade with China is about 90 million dollars a year. Or the Philippine Islands, we've spent about 600 million dollars in the Philippines in 35 years, and we, our bankers and industrialists and speculators, have private investments there of less than 200 million dollars.

Then, to save that China trade of about 90 million dollars, or to protect these private investments of less than 200 million dollars 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, shipbuilders, manufacturers, meatpackers, speculators. They would fare well. Yes, they are getting ready for another war. Why shouldn't they? It pays high dividends.

But what does it profit the men who are killed? What does it profit their mothers and sisters, their wives and their sweethearts? What does it profit their children? What does it profit anyone except the very few to whom war means huge profits? Yes. And what does it profit the nation?

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 one trillion dollars. 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 trillion dollars. Our total favorable trade balance during the 25-year period was about 24 billion dollars.

There should have been 1 billion dollars, 25 billion dollars, and 24 trillion dollars. Our total favorable trade balance during the 25-year period was about 24 billion dollars. 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.

Chapter 2, Who Makes the Profits? The World War, rather our brief participation in it, has cost the United States some 52 billion dollars. Figure it out. That means 400 dollars to every American man, woman, and child. And we haven't paid the debt yet. We are paying it. Our children will pay it, and our children's children probably still will be paying the cost of that war.

The normal profits of a business concern in the United States are 6, 8, 10, and sometimes 12%. But wartime profits, that is another matter. 20, 60, 100, 300, and even 1800%. The sky is the limit. All that traffic will bear. Uncle Sam has the money, let's get it. Of course, it isn't put that crudely in wartime.

It is dressed into speeches about patriotism, love of country, and we must all put our shoulders to the wheel. But the profits jump and leap and skyrocket and are safely pocketed. Let's just take a few examples. Take our friends, the DuPonts, the powder people. Didn't one of them testify before a Senate committee recently that their powder won the war, or saved the world for democracy, or something?

How did they do in the war? They were a patriotic corporation. Well, the average earnings of the DuPonts for the period 1910 to 1914 were $6 million a year. It wasn't much, but the DuPonts managed to get along on it. Now let's look at their average yearly profit during the war years, 1914 to 1918.

$58 million a year profit, we find. Nearly 10 times that of normal times, and the profits of normal times were pretty good. An increase in profits of more than 950%. Take one of our little steel companies that patriotically shunted aside the making of rails and girders and bridges to manufacture war materials.

Well, their 1910 to 1914 yearly earnings averaged $6 million. Then came the war, and like loyal citizens, Bethlehem Steel promptly turned to munitions making. Did their profits jump, or did they let Uncle Sam in for a bargain? Well, their 1914 to 1918 average was $49 million a year. Or let's take United States Steel.

The normal earnings during the five-year period prior to the war were $105 million a year. Not bad. Then along came the war, and up went the profits. The average yearly profit for the period 1914 to 1918 was $240 million. Not bad. There you have some of the steel and powder earnings.

Let's look at something else, a little copper perhaps. That always does well in war times. Anaconda, for instance, average yearly earnings during the pre-war years, 1910 to 1914, of $10 million. During the war years, 1914 to 1918, profits leaped to $34 million per year. Or Utah Copper, average of $5 million per year during the 1910 to 1914 period, jumped to an average of $21 million yearly profits for the war period.

Let's group these five with three smaller companies. The total yearly average profits of the pre-war period, 1910 to 1914, were $137,480,000. Then along came the war. The average yearly profits for this group skyrocketed to $408,300,000, a little increase in profits of approximately 200%. Does war pay? They paid them.

But they aren't the only ones. There are still others. Let's take leather. For the three-year period before the war, the total profits of Central Leather Company were $3.5 million. That was approximately $1,167,000 a year. Well, in 1916, Central Leather returned a profit of $15 million, a small increase of 1,100%.

That's all. The General Chemical Company averaged a profit for the three years before the war of a little over $800,000 a year. Came the war and the profits jumped to $12 million, a leap of 1,400%. International Nickel Company, and you can't have a war without nickel, showed an increase in profits from a mere average of $4 million a year to $73 million yearly.

Not bad. An increase of more than 1,700%. American Sugar Refining Company averaged $2 million a year for the three years before the war. In 1916, a profit of $6 million was recorded. Listen to Senate Document No. 259, the 65th Congress, reporting on corporate earnings and government revenues. Considering the profits of 122 meat packers, 153 cotton manufacturers, 299 garment makers, 49 steel plants, and 340 coal producers during the war, profits under 25% were exceptional.

For instance, the coal companies made between 100% and 7,856% on their capital stock during the war. The Chicago Packers doubled and tripled their earnings. And let us not forget the bankers who financed the Great War. If anyone had the cream of the profits, it was the bankers. Being partnerships rather than incorporated organizations, they do not have to report to stockholders.

And their profits were as secret as they were immense. How the bankers made their millions and their billions, I do not know. Because those little secrets never become public, even before a Senate investigatory body. But here's how some of the other patriotic industrialists and speculators chiseled their way into war profits.

Take the shoe people. They like war. It brings business with abnormal profits. They made huge profits on sales abroad to our allies. Perhaps like the munitions manufacturers and armament makers, they also sold to the enemy. For a dollar is a dollar, whether it comes from Germany or from France.

But they did well by Uncle Sam, too. For instance, they sold Uncle Sam 35 million pairs of hobnailed service shoes. There were 4 million soldiers, 8 pairs and more to a soldier. My regiment during the war had only one pair to a soldier. Some of these shoes probably are still in existence.

They were good shoes. But when the war was over, Uncle Sam has a matter of 25 million pairs left over, bought and paid for. Profits recorded and pocketed. There was still lots of leather left. So the leather people sold your Uncle Sam hundreds of thousands of McClellan saddles for the cavalry.

But there wasn't any American cavalry overseas. Somebody had to get rid of this leather, however. Somebody had to make a profit in it. So we had a lot of McClellan saddles. And we probably have those yet. Also, somebody had a lot of mosquito netting. They sold your Uncle Sam 20 million mosquito nets for the use of the soldiers overseas.

I suppose the boys were expected to put it over them as they tried to sleep in muddy trenches, one hand scratching cooties on their backs and the other making passes at scurrying rats. Well, not one of those mosquito nets ever got to France. Anyhow, these thoughtful manufacturers wanted to make sure that no soldier would be without his mosquito net.

So 40 million 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. I suppose if the war had lasted just a little longer, the enterprising mosquito netting manufacturers would have sold your Uncle Sam a couple of consignments of mosquitoes to plant in France, so that more mosquito netting would be in order.

Airplane and engine manufacturers felt they too should get their just profits out of this war. Why not? Everybody else was getting theirs. So $1 billion, count them if you live long enough, was spent by Uncle Sam in building airplane engines that never left the ground. Not one plane or motor out of the billion dollars worth ordered ever got into a battle in France.

Just the same, the manufacturers made their little profit of 30, 100 or perhaps 300 percent. Undershirts for soldiers cost 14 cents to make, and Uncle Sam paid 30 cents to 40 cents each for them. A nice little profit for the undershirt manufacturer, and the stocking manufacturer, and the uniform manufacturers, and the cap manufacturers, and the steel helmet manufacturers all got theirs.

Why, when the war was over, some 4 million sets of equipment, knapsacks and the things that go to fill them, crammed warehouses on this side. Now they are being scrapped because the regulations have changed the contents. But the manufacturers collected their wartime profits on them, and they will do it all over again the next time.

There were lots of brilliant ideas for profit making during the war. One very versatile patriot sold Uncle Sam 12 dozen 48 inch wrenches. They were very nice wrenches. The only trouble was that there was only one nut ever made that was large enough for these wrenches. That is the one that holds the turbines at Niagara Falls.

Well, after Uncle Sam had bought them and the manufacturer had pocketed the profit, the wrenches were put on freight cars and shunted all around the United States in an effort to find a use for them. When the armistice was signed, it was indeed a sad blow to the wrench manufacturer.

He was just about to make some nuts to fit the wrenches. Then he planned to sell these two to your Uncle Sam. Still another had the brilliant idea that colonels shouldn't ride in automobiles, nor should they even ride on horseback. One has probably seen a picture of Andy Jackson riding in a buck board.

Well, some 6000 buck boards were sold to Uncle Sam for the use of colonels. Not one of them was used, but the buck board manufacturer got his war 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 billion worth. Some of the ships were all right, but $635 million 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 billion.

Of this sum, $39 billion was expended in the actual war itself. This expenditure yielded $16 billion in profits. That is how the 21,000 billionaires and millionaires got that way. This $16 billion of profits is not to be sneezed at. It is quite a tidy sum, and it went to a very few.

The Senate, nigh committee, probe of the munitions industry and its wartime profits, despite its sensational disclosures, hardly has scratched the surface. Even so, it has had some effect. The State Department has been studying for some time methods of keeping out of war. The War Department suddenly decides it has a wonderful plan to spring.

The administration names a committee with the War and Navy Departments ably represented under the chairmanship of a Wall Street speculator to limit profits in wartime. To what extent isn't suggested. Possibly the profits of 300 and 600 and 1,600 percent of those who turned blood into gold in the World War would be limited to some smaller figure.

Apparently, however, the plan does not call for any limitation of losses. That is, the losses of those who fight the war. As far as I have been able to ascertain, there is nothing in the scheme to limit a soldier to the loss of but one eye or one arm, or to limit his wounds to one or two or three, or to limit the loss of life.

There is nothing in this scheme, apparently, that says not more than 12 percent of a regiment shall be wounded in battle, or that not more than 7 percent in a division shall be killed. Of course, the committee cannot be bothered with such trifling matters. Chapter 3. Who Pays the Bills?

Who provides the profits, the nice little profits of 20, 100, 300, 1,500, and 1,800 percent? We all pay them in taxation. We paid the bankers their profits when we bought Liberty Bonds at $100 and sold them back at $84 or $86 to the bankers. These bankers collected $100 plus.

It was a simple manipulation. The bankers controlled the security marts. It was easy for them to depress the price of these bonds. Then all of us, the people, got frightened and sold the bonds at $84 or $86. The bankers bought them. Then these same bankers stimulated a boom and government bonds went to par and above.

Then the bankers collected their profits. 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 veterans' hospitals in the United States. On a tour of the country, in the midst of which I am at the time of this writing, I have visited 18 government hospitals for veterans.

Among them are a total of about 50,000 destroyed men, men who were the pick of the nation 18 years ago. The very able chief surgeon at the government hospital at Milwaukee, where there are 3,800 of the living dead, told me that mortality among veterans is three times as great as among those who stayed at home.

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. They were put shoulder to shoulder and through mass psychology, they were entirely changed.

We used them for a couple of years and trained them to think nothing at all of killing or of being killed. Then suddenly we discharged them and told them to make another about face. This time they had to do their own readjustment, sans mass psychology, sans officers aid and advice and sans nationwide propaganda.

We didn't need them anymore. 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. In the government hospital in Marion, Indiana, 1,800 of these boys are in pens, 500 of them in a barracks with steel bars and wires all around outside the buildings and on the porches.

These already have been mentally destroyed. These boys don't even look like human beings. Looks on their faces. Physically, they're in good shape. Mentally they are gone. There are thousands and thousands of these cases and more and more are coming in all the time. The tremendous excitement of the war, the sudden cutting off of that excitement, the young boys couldn't stand it.

That's a part of the bill. So much for the dead. They have paid their part of the war profits. So much for the mentally and physically wounded. They are paying now their share of the war profits. But the others paid, too. They paid with heartbreaks when they tore themselves away from their firesides and their families to don the uniform of Uncle Sam on which a profit had been made.

They paid another part in the training camps where they were regimented and drilled while others took their jobs and their places in the lives of their communities. They paid for it in the trenches where they shot and were shot, where they were hungry for days at a time, where they slept in the mud and the cold and in the rain with the moans and shrieks of the dying for a horrible lullaby.

But don't forget, the soldier paid part of the dollars and cents bills, too. Up to and including the Spanish-American War, we had a prize system, and soldiers and sailors fought for money. During the Civil War, they were paid bonuses, in many instances before they went into service. The government or states paid as high as $1,200 for an enlistment.

In the Spanish-American War, they gave prize money. When we captured any vessels, the soldiers all got their share, or at least they were supposed to. Then it was found that we could reduce the cost of wars by taking all the prize money and keeping it, but conscripting the soldier anyway.

Then soldiers couldn't bargain for their labor. Everyone else could bargain, but the soldier couldn't. Napoleon once said, "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 paydays. 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 billion worth of these bonds. Yes, the soldier pays the greater part of the bill. His family pays too. They pay it in the same heartbreak that he does. As he suffers, they suffer. At nights as he lay in the trenches and watched shrapnel burst about him, they lay home in their beds and tossed sleeplessly, his father, his mother, his wife, his sisters, his brothers, his sons, and his daughters.

When he returned home minus an eye or minus a leg or with his mind broken, they suffered too, as much as and even sometimes more than he. Yes, and they too contributed their dollars to the profits of the munitions makers and bankers and shipbuilders and the manufacturers and the speculators made.

They too bought liberty bonds and contributed to the profit of the bankers after the armistice and the hocus pocus of manipulated liberty bond prices. And even now, the families of the wounded men and of the mentally broken and those who never were able to readjust themselves are still suffering and still paying.

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Don't lose out on your chance to get a Maverick X3. Visit Del Amo Motorsports of Orange County in Santa Ana and get yours. Offer in soon. See dealer for details. Chapter 4 How to Smash This Racket Well, it's a racket, alright. 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 parlays 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. The only way to smash this racket is to conscript capital and industry and labor before the nation's manhood can be conscripted.

One month before the government can conscript the young men of the nation, it must conscript capital and industry and labor. Let the officers and the directors and the high-powered executives of our armament factories and our munitions makers and our shipbuilders and our airplane builders and the manufacturers of all the other things that provide profit in wartime, as well as the bankers and the speculators, be conscripted to get $30 a month, the same wage as the lads in the trenches get.

Let the workers in these plants get the same wage as all the workers, all presidents, all executives, all directors, all managers, all bankers, yes, and all generals and all admirals and all officers and all politicians and all government office holders, everyone in the nation be restricted to a total monthly income not to exceed that paid to the soldier in the trenches.

Let all these kings and tycoons and masters of business and all those workers in industry and all our senators and governors and majors pay half of their monthly $30 wage to their families and pay war risk insurance and buy liberty bonds. Why shouldn't they? They aren't running any risk of being killed or of having their bodies mangled or their minds shattered.

They aren't sleeping in muddy trenches. They aren't hungry. The soldiers are. Give capital and industry and labor 30 days to think it over and you will find by that time there will be no war. They will smash the war racket. That and nothing else. Maybe I am a little too optimistic.

Capital still has some say. So capital won't permit the taking of the profit out of war until the people, those who do the suffering and still pay the price, make up their minds that those they elect to office shall do their bidding and not that of the profiteers. Another step necessary in this fight to smash the war racket is the limited plebiscite to determine whether a war should be declared.

A plebiscite not of all the voters but merely of those who would be called upon to do the fighting and dying. There wouldn't be very much sense in having a 76-year-old president of a munitions factory or the flat-footed head of an international banking firm or the cross-eyed manager of a uniform manufacturing plant, all of whom see visions of tremendous profits in the event of war, voting on whether the nation should go to war or not.

They never would be called upon to shoulder arms, to sleep in a trench, and to be shot. 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. There is ample precedent for restricting the voting to those affected.

Many of our states have restrictions on those permitted to vote. In most, it is necessary to be able to read and write before you may vote. In some, you must own property. It would be a simple matter each year for the men coming of military age to register in their communities as they did in the draft during the World War and be examined physically.

Those who could pass, and who would therefore be called upon to bear arms in the event of war, would be eligible to vote in a limited plebiscite. They should be the ones to have the power to decide, and not a Congress, few of whose members are within the age limit, and fewer still of whom are in physical condition to bear arms.

Only those who must suffer should have the right to vote. A third step in this business of smashing the war racket is to make certain that our military forces are truly forces for defense only. At each session of Congress, the question of further naval appropriations comes up. The swivel chair admirals of Washington, and there are always a lot of them, are very adroit lobbyists, and they are smart.

They don't shout that "we need a lot of battleships to war on this nation or that nation." Oh no. First of all, they let it be known that America is menaced by a great naval power. Almost any day, these admirals will tell you, the great fleet of this supposed enemy will strike suddenly and annihilate 125 million people just like that.

Then they begin to cry for a larger navy. For what? To fight the enemy? Oh my no. Oh no. For defense purposes only. Then incidentally, they announce maneuvers in the Pacific for defense. The Pacific is a great big ocean. We have a tremendous coastline on the Pacific. Will the maneuvers be off the coast, two or three hundred miles?

Oh no. The maneuvers will be two thousand, yes, perhaps even thirty-five hundred miles off the coast. The Japanese, a proud people of course, will be pleased beyond expression to see the United States fleet so close to Nippon's shores. Even as pleased as would be the residents of California were they to dimly discern through the morning mist the Japanese fleet playing at war games off Los Angeles.

The ships of our navy, it can be seen, should be specifically limited by law to within two hundred miles of our coastline. Had that been the law in 1898, the Maine would never have gone to Havana Harbor. She never would have been blown up. There would have been no war with Spain with its attendant loss of life.

Two hundred miles is ample in the opinion of experts for defense purposes. Our nation cannot start an offensive war if its ships can't go further than two hundred miles from the coastline. Planes might be permitted to go as far as five hundred miles from the coast for the purposes of reconnaissance, and the army should never leave the territorial limits of our nation.

To summarize, three steps must be taken to smash the war racket. One, we must take the prophet out of war. Two, we must permit the youth of the land who would bear arms to decide whether or not there should be war. Three, we must limit our military forces to home defense purposes.

Chapter Five. To Hell With War. I am not a fool as to believe that war is a thing of the past. I know the people do not want war, but there is no use in saying we cannot be pushed into another war. Going back, Woodrow Wilson was re-elected president in 1916 on a platform that he had kept us out of war and on the implied promise that he would keep us out of war.

Yet five months later, he asked Congress to declare war on Germany. In that five-month interval, the people had not been asked whether they had changed their minds. The four million young men who put on uniforms and marched or sailed away were not asked whether they wanted to go forth to suffer and die.

Then what caused our government to change its mind so suddenly? Money. An allied commission, it may be recalled, came over shortly before the war declaration and called on the president. The president summoned a group of advisors. The head of the commission spoke. Stripped of its diplomatic language, this is what he told the president and his group.

There is no use kidding ourselves any longer. The cause of the allies is lost. We now owe you, American bankers, American munitions makers, American manufacturers, American speculators, American exporters, five or six billion dollars. If we lose, and without the help of the United States, we must lose, we, England, France, and Italy cannot pay back this money, and Germany won't.

So had secrecy been outlawed as far as war negotiations were concerned, and had the press been invited to be present at that conference, or had radio been available to broadcast the proceedings, America never would have entered the World War. 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, 18 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. Yes, we have had disarmament conferences and limitations of arms conferences. They don't mean a thing. One has just failed.

The results of another have been nullified. We send our professional soldiers and our sailors and our politicians and our diplomats to these conferences, and what happens? 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.

The chief aim of any power at any of these conferences has not been to achieve disarmament to prevent war, but rather to get more armament for itself and less for any potential foe. 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 warplane.

Even this, if it were possible, would not be enough. The next war, according to experts, will be fought not with battleships, not by artillery, not with rifles, and not with machine guns. It will be fought with deadly chemicals and gases. Secretly, each nation is studying and perfecting newer and ghastlier means of annihilating its foes wholesale.

Yes, ships will continue to be built, for the shipbuilders must make their profits. And guns still will be manufactured, and powder and rifles will be made, for the munitions makers must make their huge profits. And the soldiers, of course, must wear uniforms, for the manufacturer must make their war profits too.

But victory or defeat will be determined by the skill and ingenuity of our scientists. If we put them to work making poison gas and more and more fiendish mechanical and explosive instruments of destruction, they will have no time for the constructive job of building greater prosperity for all peoples.

By putting them to this useful job, we can all make more money out of peace than we can out of war, even the munitions makers. So I say, to hell with war. Thus concludes Major General Butler's pamphlet and his speech. It's hard for me to know what to say because here we are more than a hundred years later and you can see as well as I can what of his comments have held true and what hasn't.

Difficult issue is simply that we should pay attention to the details that we need to know about. But we should not delude ourselves by thinking that war is exclusively about what is right and wrong, nor should we delude ourselves to think that in most cases war is even primarily about what is right and wrong.

I myself don't know exactly where all those lines are drawn. You look at some conflicts and the morality is clearer than in others. I don't know exactly where you should draw the lines of each different thing. All I know is that war is hell and it ought not to be profited on.

I don't want any money from it. I hope that you don't want any money from it. But at the end of the day, the world is full of wicked men who are going to profit on war until righteous men stand up and say enough is enough. I have no idea how to do that.

But I wanted to be faithful to wage my little protest here in the form of reading you this essay. As far as I'm concerned, this essay should be mandatory reading for every person, every citizen, every voter, every young person, every young man or woman, whoever wants to go and enlist in the military must read this essay first and then act accordingly.

I pray that God would give us wisdom of how to defend righteousness and justice and to eliminate wickedness and violence all over the world. With Kroger brand products from Ralph's, you can make all your favorite things this holiday season because Kroger brand's proven quality products come at exceptionally low prices.

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