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War
What You Can Do

We now have the opportunity to work together to strengthen democracy and to build a better world by spreading the news on the war manipulations far and wide. As we develop a critical mass of concerned citizens who demand to know the truth about war, the media will be forced to cover this issue more thoroughly. Then we will begin to see powerful, positive changes in the world.

We invite you to join in spreading this news in several ways. You can copy and paste one of the messages below on the war manipulations to any Internet message boards or discussion groups in which you are involved. To contact your political representatives and the media, click here. To post to Wikipedia, click here. If you have a website, we invite you to set up a link to our concise two-page summary. You can also print our two-page and 10-page war summaries directly from the website and share them widely.

Help spread the news on the war manipulations around the world by sending emails to your friends and colleagues and inviting them to pass the message on. You can copy and paste the message below to your email. Feel free to adapt or modify the message in any way. For other ways that you can help, click here. By taking advantage of the powerful tools of email and the Internet, we are building a better world.


Top U.S. General Exposes War Manipulations

That war is a racket has been told us by many, but rarely by one of this stature. Though he wrote the powerful book War is a Racket in 1935, the highly decorated U.S. General Smedley Butler (two esteemed Medals of Honor) deserves to be heralded for this timeless message, which rings true today more than ever. Below are key excerpts from this landmark book.

WAR IS A RACKET – By General Smedley Butler

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]

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! An increase in profits of more than 950%. Or take one of our steel companies. Their 1910-1914 yearly earnings averaged $6 million. 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. The average yearly profit for the period 1914-1918 was $240 million. Not bad.

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. 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.

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.

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 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."

Well, it's a racket, all right. A few profit – and the many pay. But there is a way to stop it. 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.

When our boys were sent off, they were told it was 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. 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, and every war plane.

For more on these and other eye-opening facts, go to the engaging summary of War is a Racket. For other reliable resources on the war manipulations, visit our War Information Center. To understand why all these facts aren't getting extensive media coverage, go to the media corruption summary. If these facts were reported in headline news where they belong, caring citizens would be astounded and demand to know more. This has not happened, which is why we feel compelled to provide them here.

The entire website at https://www.WantToKnow.info is dedicated both to providing a concise, reliable introduction to important information that is being hidden from us, and to inspiring us to work together to strengthen democracy and to build a better world. You can help to build a brighter future right now by educating yourself on these vital issues, and by forwarding this message to your friends and colleagues and asking them to do the same. Thank you for caring. Together we can and will build a better world for ourselves and our children.


The WantToKnow.info team is a group of dedicated researchers from around the world who compile and summarize important, verifiable facts and information being hidden from the public. You can reach us by visiting https://www.WantToKnow.info/contactus.php.