So Vicious Was This War Propaganda That Even God Was Brought Into It

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.
( Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, 1881 – 1940 )

It doesn’t require any particular bravery to stand on the floor of the Senate and urge our boys in Vietnam to fight harder and if this war mushrooms into a major conflict and a hundred thousand young Americans are killed it won’t be U.S. Senators who die.
It will be American soldiers who are too young to qualify for the Senate.
( George McGovern, 1922 – 2012 )

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.
( Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, 1881 – 1940 )

I am tired and sick of war.
Its glory is all moonshine.
It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation.
War is hell.
( General William Tecumseh Sherman, 1820 – 1891 )

What Does It Profit The Men Who Are Killed And Maimed?

Yes, they are getting ready for another war.
Why shouldn’t they?
It pays high dividends.
But what does it profit the masses?
What does it profit the men who are killed?
What does it profit the men who are maimed?
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?
( Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, 1881 – 1940 )

Everything, everything in war is barbaric.
But the worst barbarity of war is that it forces men collectively to commit acts against which individually they would revolt with their whole being.
( Ellen Key, 1849 – 1926 )

Everything you do in war is a crime in peace.
( Helen McCloy, 1904 – 1994 )

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 creating greater prosperity for all peoples.
( Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, 1881 – 1940 )

This Chamber Reeks Of Blood.
Every Senator in this chamber is partly responsible for sending 50,000 young Americans to an early grave.
This chamber reeks of blood.
It does not take any courage at all for a Congressman or a Senator or a President to wrap himself in the flag and say we are staying in Vietnam, because it is not our blood that is being shed.
( George McGovern, 1922 – 2012 )

Every war is a war against children.
( Eglantyne Jebb, 1876 – 1928 )

If it were proved to me that in making war, my ideal had a chance of being realised, I would still say ‘No’ to war.
For one does not create human society on mounds of corpses.
( Louis Lecoin, 1888 – 1971 )

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.
( Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, 1881 – 1940 )

War is as outmoded as cannibalism, chattel slavery, blood-feuds, and duelling, an insult to God and humanity, a daily crucifixion of Christ.
( Muriel Lester, 1883 – 1968 )

American Soldiers Were Told It Was To Be A “Glorious Adventure”.

Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die.
The was the “war to end wars”.
This was the “war to make the world safe for democracy”.
No one told them that dollars and cents were the real reason.
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 State 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 that 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.
( Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, 1881 – 1940 )

I’m fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.
( George McGovern, 1922 – 2012 )

I know not with what weapons World War Three will be fought, but World War Four will be fought with sticks and stones.
( Albert Einstein, 1879 – 1955 )

Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
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.
( Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, 1881 – 1940 )

War itself is, of course, a form of madness.
It’s hardly a civilised pursuit.
It’s amazing how we spend so much time inventing devices to kill each other and so little time working on how to achieve peace.
( Walter Cronkite, 1916 – 2009 )

So Vicious Was This War Propaganda That Even God Was Brought Into It.

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 clamour to kill, kill, kill.
To kill the Germans.
God is on our side.
It is His will that the Germans be killed.
( Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, 1881 – 1940 )

There never has been a war yet which, if the facts had been put calmly before the ordinary folk, could not have been prevented.
The common man, I think, is the great protection against war.
( Ernest Bevin, 1881 – 1951 )

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.
( Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, 1881 – 1940 )

I’m sick and tired of old men sitting around in air conditioned rooms here in Washington, dreaming up wars for young men to die in.
( George McGovern, 1922 – 2012 )

War is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.
Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle?
( Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, 1881 – 1940 )

Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of the river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?
( Blaise Pascal, 1623 – 1662 )

They Aren’t Running Any Risk Of Being Killed Or Having Their Bodies Mangled Or Their Minds Shattered.

Let the workers in these plants get the same wages, 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 labour thirty days to think it over and you will find, by that time, there will be no war.
That will smash the war racket, that and nothing else. Maybe.
( Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, 1881 – 1940 )

Wars are not acts of God.
They are caused by man, by man-made institutions, by the way in which man has organised his society.
( Frederick Moore Vinson, 1890 – 1953 )

I have visited eighteen government hospitals for veterans.
In them are a total of about 50,000 destroyed men.
Men who were the pick of the nation eighteen 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.
( Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, 1881 – 1940 )

War itself is the enemy of the human race.
( Howard Zinn, 1922 – 2010 )

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 dug-out?
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?
( Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, 1881 – 1940 )

War is not the continuation of politics with different means, it is the greatest mass-crime perpetrated on the community of man.
( Alfred Adler, 1870 – 1937 )

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 gains in their income tax returns.
How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.
( Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, 1881 – 1940 )

When the rich make war, it’s the poor that die.
( Jean-Paul Sartre, 1905 – 1980 )