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by
Jules Archer
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August 25 - November 3, 2020
He made it clear that he was stumping the country only on behalf of the ordinary “forgotten soldier,” just as F.D.R. had crusaded for the “forgotten man.”
War was “largely a matter of money,” he told the veterans who had gathered to hear him. “Bankers lend money to foreign countries and when they cannot repay the President sends Marines to get
it. I know—I’ve been in eleven of these expeditions.”
“If Charles Dawes got ninety million dollars for a sick bank, soldiers ought to get it for sick comrades.”
In his days of combat he had seen many men killed and wounded. But the crushing impact of seeing fifty thousand young men gathered together in “living graveyards,” forgotten by their country and the people for whom they had sacrificed arms, legs, faces, and minds,
moved him to rage against the old men in power who had doomed them to lives of empty despair.
“You always know where Butler is and whether you like it or not, he is always on the level.”
He was gratified to read on April 12, 1934, that the Senate had voted an inquiry into the manufacture of and traffic in arms. Senator Gerald P. Nye, of North Dakota, as chairman of the Senate Munitions Investigating Committee. began holding public hearings stressing the heavy profits made by American financiers and armament-makers during World War I. The Nye Committee produced shock waves by exposing the pressures exerted by the armament industry on the government to take America into that war.
The Nye investigation, continuing until 1936, strengthened isolationist sentiment in the United States and inspired a series of neutrality acts during 1935–1937.
In a broadcast over Philadelphia radio station WCAU he described his experiences in “the raping of little nations to collect money for big industries” that had large foreign investments.
Testifying before the Nye Committee, Eugene G. Grace, president of Bethlehem Steel, admitted that his corporation had received almost three million dollars in bonuses during World War I. He nervously expressed concern that such a revelation might “leave a bad taste” in the mouths of veterans who had served their country for a dollar a day, but nevertheless labeled their bonus movement an “unfortunate” enterprise.
The League’s campaign failed to make any impact in the congressional elections of 1934, however, and F.D.R. won an enormous Democratic majority in both houses of Congress.
The rumors also reached the McCormack-Dickstein Committee of the House of Representatives. This was the first House Un-American Activities Committee, at that time equally oriented against Fascist and Communist activities. Under Representative John W. McCormack, later Speaker of the House, it spent
considerable time and energy unmasking Fascist agents in America.
Not until 1939, when a new version of HUAC was reconstituted under the chairmanship of Martin Dies, did this committee become infamous for its relentless persecution directed almost exclusively against liberals and leftists ...
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Come hell or high water, press ridicule or denunciations terming him a madman, he was now determined to testify before the committee and spread the plot for a Fascist takeover of the United States all over the front pages. He would destroy it before it had a chance to crush democracy in the country he loved and had served all his life.
In a censored portion of the testimony, Butler explained why Clark thought that Roosevelt would permit himself to be pressured by such tactics. † BUTLER: He said, “You know the President is weak. He will come right along with us. He was born in this class. He was raised in this class, and he will come back. He will run true to form. In the end he will come around. But we have got to be prepared to sustain him when he does.”
I believe that sooner or later we are going to have a showdown, because I have had so many invitations to head societies and to join societies, all of them with a camouflaged patriotic intent. They are rackets, all of them.”
The American Liberty League,
Its contributors included representatives of the Morgan, Du Pont, Rockefeller, Pew, and Mellon interests. Directors of the League included Al Smith and John J. Raskob. The League later formed affiliations with pro-Fascist, antilabor, and anti-Semitic organizations.
“Well,” he said, “Al Smith is getting ready to assault the Administration in his magazine. It will appear in a month or so. He is going to take a shot at the money question. He has definitely broken with the President.”
In testimony that was also censored, Paul Comly French revealed that MacGuire had implicated the Du Ponts to him, indicating the role they would play in equipping the superarmy being planned by the plotters.
FRENCH: We discussed the question of arms and equipment, and he suggested that they could be obtained from the Remington Arms Co., on credit through the Du Ponts. I do not think at that time he mentioned the connections of Du Ponts with the American Liberty League
He concluded his testimony by urging the committee to question several persons about the plot in addition to MacGuire—notably Murphy, Doyle, and Legion Commander Frank N. Belgrano. This request was also stricken from the official record.
He had seen it in Europe. It was a plan that Hitler had used in putting all of the unemployed in labor camps or barracks—enforced labor. That would solve it overnight, and he said that when they got into power, that is what they would do; that that was the ideal plan.
If Roosevelt went along with the dictatorship as the King had done in Italy, MacGuire had suggested, Butler could have the proposed labor camps put under his own control.
FRENCH: I do not think at that time he mentioned the connection of Du Ponts with the American Liberty League, but he skirted all around it. That is, I do not think he mentioned the Liberty League, but he skirted all around the idea that that was the back door; one of the Du Ponts is on the board of directors of the American Liberty League and they own a controlling interest in the Remington Arms Co. . . . He said the General would not have any trouble enlisting 500,000 men.
“Perfect moonshine! Too unutterably ridiculous to comment upon!” J. P. Morgan himself, just back from Europe, had nothing to say.
“A fantasy!” scoffed Colonel Grayson M.-P. Murphy. “I can’t imagine how anyone could produce it or any sane person believe it.
He declared that he did not know
General Butler and had never heard of the reputed Fascist movement until the charges had been published. He insisted that in 1932 he had voted for President Roosevelt, the target of the alleged plot.
“All the principals in the case,” George Seldes noted in his book Facts and Fascism, “were American Legion officials and financial backers.”
A demand for prosecution of the conspirators came from many V.F.W. posts all over the country, which passed resolutions praising Butler for exposing the plotters. Typical was the resolution of Philadelphia Post 37 on November 22, 1934:
Whereas Major General Smedley D. Butler has again exhibited his patriotism, sterling integrity and incorruptible character by exposing a sinister clique of adventurers who would undermine and destroy our form of
government, and whereas such treasonable activities by men of money and of influence are more dangerous to our institutions than radical groups in our midst, therefore be it resolved . . . that it commend General Butler for his patriotic spirit and hereby expresses its deep gratitude for his great service to our country. And be it further resolved that the Clair Post hereby respectfully requests the Attorney General of the United States to take proper legal action against all guilty parties involved.
One Nebraska woman wrote him:
It is heartening to find a man who has the courage to fight that Octopus, Wall St. More power to you. There are millions of honest people in the United States who applaud you and would follow you heart & soul. Read of MacNider’s name being linked with the case. Heard him speak before a woman’s club in Omaha. Sized him up as being that kind of tripe. Here’s hoping you expose these traitors to a showdown. Yours for justice. . . .
MacGuire testified that as far as he knew, Clark had never had any interest in a Fascist organization. But the McCormack-Dickstein Committee located letters from MacGuire written from Europe to Clark and Christmas that proved otherwise.
Highly placed Legion officials in Washington also characterized as “horsefeathers” a rumor that a group of “big-business men” had promised the
Legion payment of adjusted service certificates, in return for a pledge to support the Fascist movement.
Mayor LaGuardia of New York laughingly described today the charges of General Smedley D. Butler that New York brokers suggested he lead an army of 500,000 ex-service men on Washington as “a cocktail putsch.” The Mayor indicated he believed that some one at a party had suggested the idea to the ex-marine as a joke.
When reporters showed him Van Zandt’s accusation that MacGuire had returned to the United States with copious data for setting up an American Fascist regime, he exclaimed, “My God, what is back of all this? I saw all of MacGuire’s reports. I cannot imagine him doing anything else on the side.”
The McCormack-Dickstein Committee was left with no other option than to conclude either that Butler was lying, in which case the whole plot was a fabrication or fantasy, or that MacGuire was lying, in which case Butler’s charges were true, and the dangerous conspiracy of which he warned was a reality.
“I was informed that there is a Fascist Party springing up in Holland under the leadership of a man named Mussait who is an engineer by profession, and who has approximately 50,000 followers at the present time, ranging in age from 18 to 25 years. It is said that this man is in close touch
with Berlin and is modeling his entire program along the lines followed by Hitler in Germany. . . .” So you studied this Fascist Party when you were in Holland, did you?
The committee was convinced that MacGuire had been the “cashier” for the planned veterans organization.
On November 26, 1934, referring to MacGuire’s testimony, Representative Dickstein declared, “You can’t get away from it—somebody is trying to shield somebody on something that looks rotten, and honest people don’t do that.”
Next day, November 26, the committee’s preliminary findings were released in an eight-thousand-word statement signed by McCormack and Dickstein. It began: “This committee has had no evidence before it that would in the slightest degree warrant calling before it such men as John W. Davis, General Hugh Johnson, General James G. Harbord, Thomas W. Lamont, Admiral William S. Sims or Hanford MacNider. The committee will not take cognizance of names brought into the testimony which constitutes mere hearsay. This committee is not concerned with premature newspaper accounts, when given and published
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On that same day Dickstein wrote to President Roosevelt, “The committee on C.U.A.A. has issued the enclosed short report on Gen. Butler’s charges, which we have made public, as the pressure brought to bear on the committee made this course absolutely imperative. . . . I should very much like to have a conversation with you at your convenience.”
BUTLER PLOT INQUIRY NOT TO BE DROPPED Dickstein Says Committee Will Get to the Bottom of Story— Awaits Clark’s Return
