/ M A R K T W A I N S I N G S A N D P R A Y S ______________________________________________ / "Loyalty to my country: always. Loyalty to my government: when it deserves it." / - Mark Twain
"The citizen who sees his society's democratic clothes being worn out and does not cry it out, is not a patriot, but a traitor." / - Mark Twain / ______________________________________________
/
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(Satan:) "Monarchies, aristocracies, and religions are all based upon that large defect in your race -- the individual's distrust of his neighbor, and his desire, for safety's or comfort's sake, to stand well in his neighbor's eye. These institutions will always remain, and always flourish, and always oppress you, affront you, and degrade you, because you will always be and remain slaves of minorities.
There was never a country where the majority of the people were in their secret hearts loyal to any of these institutions."
?
A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen,
and at first will have a hearing and be applauded; but it will not last long; those others will outshout them,
and presently the anti-war audiences will thin out and lose popularity.
Before long you will see this curious thing: the speakers stoned from the platform,
and free speech strangled by hordes of furious men who in their secret hearts are still at one with those stoned speakers -- as earlier -- but do not dare to say so And now the whole nation -- pulpit and all -- will take up the war-cry, and shout itself hoarse, and mob any honest man who ventures to open his mouth; and presently such mouths will cease to open.
for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord,
blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, / / water their way with tears, /
(WIKIPEDIA:)
"The War Prayer," a short story or prose poem by Mark Twain,
is a scathing indictment of war, and particularly of blind
patriotic and religious fervor as motivations for war.
The structure of the work is simple, but effective: an unnamed
country goes to war, and patriotic citizens attend a church service
for soldiers who have been called up. The people call upon their
God to grant them victory and protect their troops. Suddenly,
an "aged stranger" appears and announces that he is
God's messenger. He explains to them that he is there to speak
aloud the second part of their prayer for victory, the part which
they have implicitly wished for but have not spoken aloud themselves:
the prayer for the suffering and destruction of their enemies.
What follows is a grisly depiction of hardships inflicted on wartorn
nations by their conquerors. The story ends on a pessimistic note:
the messenger is ignored.
The piece was left unpublished by Mark Twain at his death, largely due to pressure from his family, who feared that the story would be considered sacrilegious. Twain's publisher and other friends also discouraged him from publishing it. According to one account, his illustrator Dan Beard asked him if he would publish it regardless, and Twain replied that "Only dead men can tell the truth in this world. It can be published after I am dead." Mindful of public reaction, he considered that he had a family to support, and did not want to be seen as a lunatic or fanatic. In a letter to his confidant Joseph Twichell, he wrote that he had "suppressed" the book for seven years, even though his conscience told him to publish it, because he was not "equal" to the task.
In 2007, journalist Markos Kounalakis, the publisher of The Washington Monthly, produced an animated film with voices by Peter Coyote, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Erik Bauersfeld, and illustrations by Akis Dimitrakopoulos. It was released on Memorial Day, May 28, 2007 on YouTube and its own website.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ / "Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. / He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel. / And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for "the universal brotherhood of man" // -- with his mouth." // - Mark Twain, "What Is Man"?
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ / "The citizen who sees his society's democratic clothes being worn out and does not cry it out, is not a patriot, but a traitor." / - Mark Twain
O! had I the ability, and could reach the nation's ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder.
We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.
What, to the American slave,
is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more
than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty
to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is
a sham; your
boasted liberty,
an unholy license; your national greatness,
swelling
vanity; your sounds of rejoicing
are empty
and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy
-- a thin veil to cover up crimes which would
disgrace a nation of savages.
There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.
Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival....
- Frederick Douglas
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ / "I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land."
/
Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, one of the most colorful officers in the Marine Corps' long history, was one of the two Marines who received two Medals of Honor for separate acts of outstanding heroism.
War is just a racket.
A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of 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 masses.
I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we'll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.
"I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land." - Mark Twain/
I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.
There isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its "finger men" to point out enemies, its "muscle men" to destroy enemies, its "brain men" to plan war preparations, and a "Big Boss" Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism.
It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.
The record of racketeering is long.
I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914.
I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in.
I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street.
I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers* in 1909-1912 (* Prescott Bush's bank, convicted of aiding Hitler until 1943)
I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916.
In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.
During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket.
Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________ / "It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare." / - Mark Twain / 
Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, one of the most colorful officers in the Marine Corps' long history, was one of the two Marines who received two Medals of Honor for separate acts of outstanding heroism.
He was not yet 20 when the citizens of his native West Chester, Pennsylvania, presented him with a sword on his return from the Boxer Rebellion in China. Some 50 years later that trophy was presented to the Marine Corps for permanent custody.
General Butler, later known to thousands of Marines as "Ol' Gimlet Eye," was born 30 July 1881. He was still in his teens when, on 20 May 1898, he was appointed a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps for the War with Spain.
Following a brief period of instruction at Washington, D.C., he served with the Marine Battalion, North Atlantic Squadron, until 11 February 1899, when he was ordered to his home and honorably discharged on 16 February 1899.
He was commissioned a first lieutenant in the Marine Corps on 8 April 1899; promoted to captain, 23 July 1900; to major, 13 May 1908; to lieutenant colonel, 1 August 1916; to colonel (temporary), 1 July 1918; to brigadier general (temporary), 7 October 1918; to colonel (permanent), 9 March 1919; to brigadier general (permanent), 4 June 1920; and to major general, 5 July 1929.
In April 1899, Lieutenant Butler was assigned to duty with the Marine Battalion at Manila, Philippine Islands. From 14 June 1900 to October 1900, he served with distinction in China, and was promoted to captain by brevet for distinguished conduct and public service in the presence of the enemy near Tientsin, China. He was wounded in that battle on 13 July 1900.
Returning to the United States in January 1901, he served at various posts within the continental limits and on several ships. He also served ashore in Puerto Rico and the Isthmus of Panama for short periods. In December 1909, he commanded the 3d Battalion, 1st Regiment on the Isthmus of Panama. He was temporarily detached to command an expeditionary battalion organized for service in Nicaragua, 11 August 1912, in which capacity he participated in the bombardment, assault and capture of Coyotepe, 12 to 31 October. He remained on duty in Nicaragua until November 1912, when he rejoined the Marines at Camp Elliott, Panama.
His first Medal of Honor was presented following action at Vera Cruz, Mexico, 21 and 22 April 1914, where he commanded the Marines who landed and occupied the city. General Butler (then a major) "was eminent and conspicuous in command of his Battalion. He exhibited courage and skill in leading his men through the action of the 22d and in the final occupation of the city."
The following year, he was awarded the second Medal of Honor for bravery and forceful leadership as Commanding Officer of detachments of Marines and seamen of the USS Connecticut in repulsing Caco resistance on Fort Riviere, Haiti, 17 November 1915.
During World War I, he commanded the 13th Regiment in France. For exceptionally meritorious service, he was awarded the Army Distinguished Service Medal, the Navy Distinguished Service Medal, and the French Order of the Black Star. When he returned to the United States in 1919, he became Commanding General of the Marine Barracks, Quantico, Virginia, and served in this capacity until January 1924, when he was granted leave of absence to accept the post of Director of Public Safety of the City of Philadelphia. In February 1926, he assumed command of the Marine Corps Base at San Diego, California. In March 1927, he returned to China for duty with the 3d Marine Brigade. From April to 31 October he again commanded the Marine Barracks at Quantico. On 1 October 1931, he was retired upon his own application after completion of 33 years' service in the Marine Corps.
General Butler died at the Naval Hospital, Philadelphia, on 21 June 1940, following a four-week illness.
The USS Butler, a destroyer, later converted to a high speed minesweeper, was named for General Butler in 1942. This vessel participated in the European and Pacific theaters of operations during the second World War.
/Some Americans regard our country as superior to other nations because we don't change governments by coup d'état - and we never have. Perhaps because of our long tradition of power changing hands by election, we regard our nation as immune to the use of force for political purposes. True, assassins have killed four of our Presidents, but these deaths did not lead to turmoil and chaos; the government followed well-established procedures for transferring control to the men previously elected Vice President. Unlike other nations where assassination often leads to civil war, the United States has avoided this.
How different is America from nations where political power comes quite directly "from the barrel of a gun"? A curious footnote to American history suggests that, except for the personal integrity of a remarkable American general, a coup d'état intended to remove President Franklin D. Roosevelt from office in 1934 might have plunged America into civil war.
The General
This remarkable man was Smedley Darlington Butler, retired U.S. Marine Corps Major General. Butler is the sort of person for whom the word "colorful" is woefully inadequate. Butler won America's highest military award for bravery (the Congressional Medal of Honor) twice. His style of warfare was unusual not only for his personal courage, but for the energy he put into avoiding bloodshed when it was possible to achieve his aims in other ways. Not surprisingly, this engendered a remarkable loyalty among the men who served under him - and that loyalty was why certain men asked Butler to lead a military attack on Washington, D.C., with the goal of capturing President Roosevelt.
Butler was more than a remarkable soldier. He served as police commissioner of Philadelphia during 1924-25 (on loan from the Marines), in an attempt to enforce Prohibition. While the effort was a failure, his insistence on enforcing the law against wealthy partygoers as well as poor immigrants established his reputation as a man of high integrity. He was not universally loved, but he was widely respected.
Butler is best remembered today
for his oft-quoted statement in the socialist newspaper Common
Sense in 1935:
I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American
oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place
for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped
in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the
benefit of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I
helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of
Brown Brothers in 1909-12. I brought light to the Dominican Republic
for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras "right"
for American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped
see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.... Looking
back on it, I felt I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The
best he could do was to operate his racket in three city districts.
We Marines operated on three continents.
In War Is A Racket, Butler argued for a powerful navy,
but one prohibited from traveling more than 200 miles from the
U.S. coastline. Military aircraft could travel no more than 500
miles from the U.S. coast, and the army would be prohibited from
leaving the United States. Butler also proposed that all workers
in defense industries, from the lowest laborer to the highest
executive, be limited to "$30 a month, the same wage as the
lads in the trenches get." He also proposed that a declaration
of war should be passed by a plebiscite in which only those subject
to conscription would be eligible to vote.
From 1935 through 1937, Butler was a spokesman for the League Against War and Fascism, a Communist-dominated organization of the time. He also participated in the Third U.S. Congress Against War and Fascism, sharing the platform with well-known leftists of the era, including Langston Hughes, Heywood Broun, and Roger Baldwin. When the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) threatened the collapse of the Soviet-supported Spanish government, the League's pacifism evaporated, and they supported intervention. Butler, however, remained true to his belief in non-interventionism: "What the hell is it our business what's going on in Spain?" But before Butler became involved in these causes, he had already exposed a fascist plot against his own government.
The Plot
Butler had friends in the press and Congress, so he could not be ignored when he came forward in late 1934 with a tale of conspiracy against President Roosevelt, in which he had been asked to take a leading role. At first glance, Butler seems an unlikely candidate for such a position. While Butler was a Republican, in 1932 he campaigned for Roosevelt, calling himself a "Republican-for-Ex-President Hoover." (Butler had a poor relationship with Hoover going back to their time together during the Boxer Rebellion.)
But there were good reasons why someone seeking to overthrow the U.S. government would have wanted Butler involved. Butler was a powerful symbol to many American soldiers and veterans - an enlisted man's general, one that spoke out for their interests while on active duty, and after retirement. Butler would have attracted men to his cause that would not otherwise have participated in a march on Washington.
Butler would have been a good choice also because of his military skills. His personal courage and tactical skill would have made him a powerful commander of an irregular army. Finally, his ties of friendship to many officers still on active duty might have undermined military opposition to his force, as friends and colleagues sought to avoid a direct confrontation with him.
Another reason that the plotters might have approached such an unlikely candidate was that Butler was not regarded as a great intellect. After World War I, the Marine Corps had began to emphasize a new college-educated professionalism. Butler, one of the less educated "bushwhacer" generals, might have seemed easy to manipulate.
Butler testified that bond trader Gerald MacGuire had approached him in the summer of 1933. MacGuire claimed to represent wealthy Wall Street broker Grayson Murphy, Singer sewing machine heir Robert Sterling Clark, and other unnamed men of wealth. They asked Butler to speak publicly on behalf of the gold standard, recently abandoned by President Roosevelt. MacGuire's rationale for why Butler should ally himself with the gold standard cause was that the veterans of World War I were due a bonus in 1945. As MacGuire told Butler, "We want to see the soldiers' bonus paid in gold. We do not want the soldier to have rubber money or paper money."
It appears that the plotters underestimated Butler's intelligence and character. When this explanation failed to persuade Butler, MacGuire and Clark offered him money, abandoning any pretense of civic-mindness. Butler's sense of honor prevented him from speaking in favor of any policy for mercenary reasons.
MacGuire eventually told Butler
their real goal. MacGuire asked Butler to lead an army of 500,000
veterans in a march on Washington, D.C. The stated mission was
to protect Roosevelt from other plotters, and install a "secretary
of general welfare" to "take all the worries and details
off of his shoulders." But Butler saw through their supposed
concern for Roosevelt. He testified before Congress that he told
MacGuire:
[M]y 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.
Yes; and then you will put somebody
in there you can run; is that the idea? The President will go
around and christen babies and dedicate bridges, and kiss children.
Mr. Roosevelt will never agree to that himself.
Butler eventually deduced that the real goal was a coup d'état
to take Roosevelt captive, and force reinstatement of the gold
standard, the loss of which many wealthy Americans feared would
lead to rapid inflation. The plotters would keep Roosevelt as
a figurehead until he could be "encouraged" to retire.
That MacGuire had significant financial backing behind him seems clear, considering the substantial bank savings books he showed to Butler. What remains unclear is whether the names MacGuire dropped (other than Robert Sterling Clark) were really involved, or whether MacGuire was a con man.
MacGuire's claims and financial resources alone did not convince Butler that such a conspiracy actually existed. The fulfillment of a series of startling predictions by MacGuire did finally persuade Butler that there was more than just hot air involved. MacGuire knew in advance of significant personnel changes in the White House. He correctly predicted the formation of the American Liberty League (the major conservative opposition to Roosevelt), and the principal players in it. Especially disturbing was that many of the supposed backers of the plot were also members of the League. MacGuire's claim that the League ("villagers in the opera" of the scheme, in MacGuire's words) was part of the plot could not be easily dismissed.
The American Liberty League was a successor to the highly successful Association Against the Prohibition Amendment, the lobbying organization responsible for the repeal of the "Noble Experiment." From its formation in 1918 until 1926, the AAPA made little progress, at least partly because it had little money. But in 1926, money poured into the AAPA from some of America's wealthiest men, including Pierre, Irenee, and Lammot du Pont, John J. Raskob, and Charles H. Sabin. The AAPA spent its new found wealth on distribution of literature, and on the formation of a bewildering number of associated organizations. These associated organizations gave the impression of a grassroots movement, rather than a collection of millionaires feeding press releases to friendly newspapers. The AAPA also rapidly took control of the Democratic Party, with one of their supporters, Al Smith, receiving the 1928 Democratic Presidential nomination. While AAPA had powerful friends within the Republican Party, they never achieved control of it.
The AAPA's motivations were a mixture of idealism and pragmatism. The stated concern was that Prohibition had done serious damage to the principle of federalism - that the federal government's authority did not include the police powers used to enforce Prohibition. But it appears that this was not the only motivation, or even the reason most important to the men who funded the AAPA. Like many other Americans, these business leaders "found themselves unable to gratify what seemed a natural, more or less innocent, desire without breaking a law" (i.e., the consumption of alcoholic beverages). To suddenly find themselves among the criminal classes was not pleasant to a group who had always thought of themselves as law-abiding and respectable members of American society. There is also strong evidence that the backers of the AAPA saw Repeal as a method of reducing income and corporate taxes, by taxing alcoholic beverages instead.
The AAPA went out of business at the end of 1933, with the end of Prohibition. But within a year, from the same offices, with most of the same backers, many of the same employees, and much of the same style, it reappeared as the American Liberty League. Throughout the next six years, it led the fight against the New Deal, arguing that much of Roosevelt's program was contrary to the letter and spirit of the Constitution. In an age when Hitler and Mussolini had commandeered extraordinary economic powers, the fears that the American Liberty League expressed about Roosevelt's vaguely similar gathering of economic power could not be summarily dismissed.
The League, in spite of its impressive resources, was rapidly made to appear "ridiculous or dangerous" or both by the Roosevelt Administration. Most importantly, the leadership of the League was largely rich men. The Depression-era gap between rich and poor had become too wide, too obvious, and too painful for the League to be credible to the majority of Americans. Butler's testimony before Congress claimed that some of the people associated with the League were the very ones that had approached him - including Grayson Murphy, the League's treasurer.
In the depths of the Great Depression, in that nadir of despair before Roosevelt gave his stirring first inaugural address in 1933, America was awash in political groups identifying in greater or lesser degrees with communism or fascism. Rep. Samuel Dickstein (D-NY), concerned about the threat of such groups, persuaded the House of Representatives to create the Special Committee to Investigate Nazi Propaganda Activities in the United States. This committee investigated Butler's charges in late 1934.
MacGuire, not surprisingly, denied that such a plot existed. Instead, he claimed his activities had been political lobbying to preserve the gold standard, but he quickly destroyed his credibility as a witness by giving contradictory testimony. While the final report agreed with Butler that there was evidence of a coup d'état plot against Roosevelt, no further action was taken on it. The Committee's authority to subpoena witnesses expired at the end of 1934, and the Justice Department started no criminal investigation.
Part of the reason for the lack of prosecution of the alleged plotters may have been the untimely death of the only man who could have testified against the rest: Gerald MacGuire. He died at age 37 from complications of pneumonia, less than a month after the Committee released its report. MacGuire's physician claimed that his death was partly the result of the stress of the charges made by Butler, but there is no reason to assume that MacGuire's death was in any way suspicious.
The Committee's report excluded many of the most embarrassing names given by MacGuire, and repeated by Butler. MacGuire had claimed that 1928 Democratic President candidate Al Smith, General Hugh Johnson (head of Roosevelt's National Recovery Administration), General Douglas MacArthur, and a number of other generals and admirals were privy to the plot. Since Butler had no evidence of their involvement, other than MacGuire's claims, it was certainly reasonable for the Committee to exclude these details from the final report as "certain immaterial and incompetent evidence." But in conjunction with MacGuire's apparent advance knowledge of the details of internal White House staff activities, it certainly suggests that if a coup was planned, it had significant support within the Roosevelt Administration.
The News Media Downplays The Plot
The news media gave an inappropriately small amount of attention to the report. Time magazine ridiculed Butler's claims. The week following Butler's testimony, Time described it as a "Plot Without Plotters," simply because the alleged plotters claimed innocence. But Time admitted that Veterans of Foreign Wars commander James Van Zandt confirmed that he, too, had been approached to lead such a march on Washington.
The leftist magazine New Masses carried an article by John Spivak that included wild claims of "Jewish financiers working with fascist groups." Spivak's article spun an elaborate web involving the American Jewish Congress, the Warburg family, "which originally financed Hitler," the Hearst newspaper chain, the Morgan banking firm, the du Ponts, a truly impressive list of prominent American Jewish businessmen, and Nazi spies! Spivak's article raised some disturbing and legitimate questions about why much of Butler's testimony was left out of the final committee report. But these important concerns were seriously undermined by Spivak's paranoid ravings. The left-of-center magazines Nation and New Republic were unconcerned about it, since in their view "fascism originated in pseudoradical mass movements," and therefore could not come from a wealthy cabal.
Newspaper descriptions of the final report are also astonishing for how lightly most treated it. A New York Times article about subversion and foreign agitators started on the front page, but gave only two paragraphs to the coup plot inside the paper. "It also alleged that definite proof has been found that the much publicized Fascist march on Washington... was actually contemplated." It was not a major story.
The San Francisco Chronicle took the story more seriously. The only headline with a larger type size that day concerned the recent fatal crash of the airship Macon. The Chronicle carried an Associated Press story headlined, "Justice Aids Probe Butler Fascist Story." The first five paragraphs were devoted to Butler's allegations. The Chronicle quoted the Committee report that it "was able to verify all the pertinent statements by General Butler, with the exception of the direct statement suggesting creation of the organization."
A third newspaper sampled showed an even more astonishing lack of interest than the New York Times: the Sacramento Bee used a substantially different Associated Press wire story that emphasized propaganda efforts by foreign agents. Another AP wire story, at the bottom of page five, described Butler's allegations, taking the Committee's report at face value. This wire story includes the comforting knowledge that the committee found "no evidence to show a connection between this effort" and any foreign government.
An apparently serious effort to overthrow the government, perhaps with the support of some of America's wealthiest men, largely substantiated by a Congressional committee, was mostly ignored. Why? Roosevelt's Secretary of the Interior, Harold Ickes, wrote a book in 1939 about the concentration of American journalism. He claimed that, "In 1934, 82 per cent of all dailies had a complete monopoly in their communities." Newspaper chains, in Ickes' view, "control a dangerously large share of the national daily circulation and in many cities have no competition."
Ickes' book was largely devoted to proving that the major newspapers of the United States were intentionally distorting the news, and in some cases, directly lying. Ickes argued that newspaper editors did so in the interests of both their advertisers and in defense of the capitalist class. Ickes mentioned the Liberty League as one of the "propaganda outfits" who were allied with the major newspapers. Indeed,the New York Times, one of the papers that had downplayed the Committee's report, had editorialized in favor of the Liberty League's formation.
Did newspapers and magazines onsciously play down the plot, because it represented an embarrassment to people of influence? Or did editors simply give it low visibility because they regarded it as an absurd story?
We must consider another disturbing possibility. Butler was associated with the loose alliance of progressive and populist forces that were dragging Roosevelt towards the left. It is easy to forget that for much of Roosevelt's first term as President from 1932-36, he was the rope in a tug of war between conservative and progressive forces in America. The popularity of men such as Senator Huey Long (D-Louisiana) and the nationally known radio priest Father Coughlin - and the need to short-circuit their rising political power - appears to have caused Roosevelt's increasingly leftward movement in 1935-36.
Is it possible that Butler concocted this story as a way of creating animosity towards conservatives by Roosevelt? If Butler had lied to the Committee, and no such conspiracy was ever planned, why did MacGuire apparently perjure himself before the Committee? Or, alternatively, could leftward leaning members of the Roosevelt Administration have manipulated Butler into believing that such a plot actually existed as a way of creating animosity towards conservatives, thus dragging Roosevelt to the left? Either theory could explain why MacGuire, Murphy, Clark, or the other supposed plotters were never prosecuted.
Yet another possibility (though less likely) is that there was no prosecution because Roosevelt's own advisors had taken part in the plot, as MacGuire claimed. A criminal prosecution would have washed the Roosevelt Administration's dirty laundry in public.
Why Is The Plot So Poorly Known?
Butler's account of the MacGuire plot was a very serious accusation. If MacGuire had told Butler the truth, a large number of wealthy men had made serious plans to overthrow representative government in the United States - though their concern that Roosevelt was creating a government in the style of Mussolini or Hitler, might provide some legitimate reason for their actions. Why doesn't this plot appear in history books? That conservatives might discount the plot is not unexpected; that liberals have tended to ignore the plot is a little more surprising.
It is hard to imagine how different American politics was in the 1930s. The collapse of the world economy had shaken the faith of many Americans in individualism and free market capitalism. Many traditionalists, here and in Europe, toyed with the ideas of Fascism and National Socialism; many liberals dallied with Socialism and Communism. Prominent populists such as Huey Long and Father Coughlin sided with progressives in support of isolationism, redistribution of wealth, and a federal government that would play a more active role in the American economy.
In hindsight, the moral and economic deficiencies of these various collectivized systems are now clear. In 1934, however, people of good will persuaded themselves that Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin were doing good, and ignored the great evils that were already underway. To turn over the rock exposing MacGuire's plot raises unpleasant questions about the political sensibilities of both right and left in 1930s America.
How Secure Are The Institutions of Legal Government In America?
How secure, indeed? It would be tempting to write off this entire matter as a group of con men separating wealthy conservatives from their money by pretending to hatch a plot against the Roosevelt Administration. But there are too many disturbing pieces of evidence in this tale that suggest that the Zeitgeist of the 1930s was not limited to Europe.
If MacGuire's claims to Butler were true, some U.S. military commanders were prepared to stand aside while 500,000 veterans marched on Washington and took Roosevelt captive. (Between the World Wars, the United States Army was so small that 500,000 veterans might have given them a serious fight - even if every officer remained loyal to Roosevelt.)
But unlike many European countries, American government was highly decentralized in 1934, and this would have worked against any serious military action against the legitimate government. Every state governor had control of state militia units, armed with out of date, but still serviceable military weapons.
In addition to the regularly organized state militias, the population of the United States, then as now, was heavily armed with the sort of weapons well suited to military operations. Whatever the advantages of the plotters' army of 500,000 veterans, they would have been far outnumbered by the unorganized militia of the United States - then as now, consisting of every U.S. citizen between 18 and 45, and legally obligated by state laws to fight at the order of the governor in the event of insurrection, invasion, or war.
But in a nation that was suffering from the ravages of the Great Depression, another model exists for what might have happened: the Spanish Civil War. The divisions over religion in America were not as dramatic as those that ripped apart Spanish society. But many Americans were beginning to lose their faith in American institutions - as evidenced by the growth of American Nazi and Communist movements during the 1930s. It is frightening to think of what might have happened if a general as capable as Butler had become the man on a white horse.
In the words of U.S. Supreme Court
Justice Hugo Black, delivered at New York University in 1960 concerning
the protections of the U.S. Bill of Rights:
I cannot agree with those who think of the Bill of Rights as an
18th century straitjacket, unsuited for this age. The evils it
guards against are not only old, they are with us now, they exist
today.
Experience all over the world
has demonstrated, I fear, that the distance between stable, orderly
government and one that has been taken over by force is not so
great as we have assumed.
Indeed, the plot that Butler exposed - if what MacGuire claimed
was true - is a sobering reminder to Americans. We were not
immune to the sentiments that gave rise to totalitarian governments
throughout the world in the 1930s. We make a serious mistake when we assume,
"It can't
happen here!"
Clayton E. Cramer is a software engineer with a Northern California manufacturer of telecommunications equipment. His first book, By The Dim And Flaring Lamps: The Civil War Diary of Samuel McIlvaine, was published by Library Research Associates (Monroe, NY) in 1990. Mr. Cramer's second book, For The Defense of Themselves And The State: The Original Intent and Judicial Interpretation of the Right To Keep And Bear Arms was published by Praeger Publishers (Westport, Conn.) in 1994. Mr. Cramer recently completed his B.A. in History at Sonoma State University.
Bibliography
Archer, Jules, The Plot To Seize The White House, (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1973).
Brinkley, Alan, Voices of Protest, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1982).
Butler, Smedley D., War Is A Racket, (New York: Round Table Press, 1935).
Cahn, Edmond, The Great Rights, (New York: Macmillan Co., 1963).
Ickes, Harold L., America's House of Lords: An Inquiry into the Freedom of the Press, (Rahway, N.J.: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1939).
New York Times, February 16, 1935; March 26, 1935.
Schmidt, Hans, Maverick Marine, (Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Kentucky, 1987).
Sevareid, Eric, Not So Wild A Dream, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946).
Spivak, John L., "Wall Street's Fascist Conspiracy", New Masses, January 29, 1935, 9-15; February 5, 1935, (page numbers missing on the microfilm)..
Sacramento Bee, February 15, 1935.
San Francisco Chronicle, February 16, 1935.
Time, 24:23 [December 3, 1934].
U.S. House of Representatives, Special Committee on Un-American Activities, Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain Other Propaganda Activities, Hearings 73-D.C.-6, Part 1, 73rd Cong., 2nd sess., (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1935).
U.S. House of Representatives, Special Committee on Un-American Activities, Public Statement, 73rd Cong., 2nd sess., (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1934).
Wolfskill, George, The Revolt of the Conservatives: A History of the American Liberty League, 1934-1940, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1962).
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