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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 in which the profits are reckoned in dollars
and the losses in lives. In
the World War [World War I] 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 huge gains in their income tax
returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax
returns no one knows. [Please note
these are 1935 U.S. dollars. To adjust for inflation,
multiply all figures X 10 or more]
WHO MAKES THE PROFITS?
The World
War cost the United States some $52 billion. That means $400
[over $4,000 in today's dollars] to every American
man, woman, and child. The normal yearly profits of
a business concern in the U.S. are 6 to 12%. But war-time
profits, that is another matter 60, 100, 300, and even
1,800% the sky is the limit. Uncle Sam has the
money. Let's get it. Of course, it isn't put that crudely in
war time. It is dressed into speeches about patriotism, love
of country, and "we must all put our shoulders to the
wheel," but the profits jump, leap, and skyrocket and are
safely pocketed.
Take our
friends the du Ponts, the powder people. The average pre-war
earnings of the du Ponts for the period 1910 to 1914 were $6
million a year. Now let's look at their average yearly
profit during the war years, 1914 to 1918. $58 million a
year profit we find! Nearly ten 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 steel companies. Their 1910-1914 yearly earnings
averaged $6 million. Then came the war. And, like loyal
citizens, Bethlehem Steel promptly turned to munitions
making. Did their profits jump? Well, their 1914-1918
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. Then along came the war
and up went the profits. The average yearly profit for the
period 1914-1918 was $240 million. Not bad.
They
sold your Uncle Sam 20 million mosquito nets for the use of
the soldiers overseas. Well, not one of these mosquito nets
ever got to France! There
were pretty good profits in mosquito netting, even if there
were no mosquitoes in France. 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.
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. 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. It has been estimated
that the war cost your Uncle Sam $52 billion [X 10 or
more for inflation]. 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 profits is
not to be sneezed at. It is quite a tidy sum. And it went to
a very few.
WHO PAYS THE BILLS?
Who provides
these nice little profits of 20, 100, 300, 1,500 and 1,800
per cent? We all pay them in taxation. 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 veteran's hospitals
in the United States. On a tour of the country, I visited 18
government hospitals for veterans. In them are a total of
about 50,000 destroyed men men who were the pick of the
nation 18 years ago. Mortality among veterans is three times
as great as those who stayed at home.
Boys with a
normal viewpoint were taken out of the offices, factories,
and classrooms and put into the ranks. There they were
remolded. They were made to "about face," to regard
murder as the order of the day. They were put
through mass psychology and entirely changed. We 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. We didn't need them any more. Many of these
fine young boys are eventually destroyed, mentally, because
they could not make that final "about face" alone.
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 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 their ships might be
torpedoed by submarines built with United States patents.
They were just told it was to be a "glorious adventure."
HOW TO
SMASH THIS RACKET!
Well,
it's a racket, all right. 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. Three steps must be taken to
smash the war racket: 1) We must take the profit out
of war; 2) We must permit the youth of the land who
would bear arms to decide whether or not there should be
war; and 3) We must limit our military forces to home
defense purposes.
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. Woodrow Wilson
was re-elected president in 1916 on a platform that he had
"kept 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. Then what caused our
government to change its mind so suddenly? Money.
An allied
commission came over shortly before the war declaration and
called on the President. The President summoned a group of
advisers. 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 US
we must lose) we, England, France and Italy, cannot pay back
this money. So..."
Had
secrecy been outlawed as far as war negotiations, and had
the press been invited to be present at that conference,
America never would have entered the war.
But this conference, like all war discussions, was shrouded
in utmost secrecy. When our boys were sent off, they were
told it was a "war to make the world safe for democracy" and
a "war to end all wars." Very little has been accomplished
to assure us that the World War was really the war to end
all wars. Disarmament conferences don't mean a thing. At all
these conferences, lurking in the background are the
sinister agents of those who profit by war. They see to it
that these conferences do not seriously limit armaments.
So...I say, TO HELL WITH WAR!
For an
engaging 10-page summary of this book:
www.WantToKnow.info/warisaracket
For powerful information on the war cover-up:
www.WantToKnow.info/warinformation
For a History Channel video on how Butler stopped a plot to
overthrow FDR,
click here
War
Cover-up
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