The Plot To Seize The White House (18 page)

Leonard, jubilant at this abject surrender, conferred with Morris and Butler. Angry at his persecutors, Butler wanted to insist upon the court-martial, but as he confided to a relative on February 12, "Mother and Bunny [his wife] were both breaking under the strain," and he decided that it wasn't worth their anguish to fight the establishment to a finish. "I feel we could have licked them badly," he added, "but now I have a club over their heads, as they were warned that we would tell if they tried any more persecutions.”

Since he had already won a clear moral victory, he decided he could afford to let the government save a little face. He agreed to write a letter reiterating his explanation that the Mussolini speech had been made at a private club meeting and expressing regret that anything he had said "caused embarrassment to the Government." He would accept an official gentle "reprimand," which was, however, not to be written by Adams but by Leonard himself for Adams to sign. In return for these concessions the government would announce that it was dropping its court martial and was immediately restoring the general to his command with full rank and privileges, without prejudice of any kind.

The administration hastily accepted Butler's terms, and the suitable papers were drawn. On February 9 the court-martial was canceled, and a mild reprimand credited Butler's explanation that his speech had been intended to be "confined to the limits of four walls," as well as acknowledging his "long record of brilliant service." One newspaper headlined the story: "YOU'RE A VERY BAD BOY"- SAYS ADAMS 
TO BUTLER.
 

The general's admirers grinned in delight. He was released from arrest and restored to duty, his command flag once more fluttering over Quantico. It was a signal and remarkable victory for a lone Marine officer to win over the President of the United States and the Secretaries of State and the Navy.

"I was glad to sec Smedley Butler get out of his case as he did," Will Rogers wrote in his column on March 15, 1931. "You know that fellow just belongs in a war all the time. He don't belong in Peace time. He is what I would call a natural born warrior. He will fight anybody, any time. But he just can't distinguish Peace from war. He carries every medal we ever gave out. He has two Congressional Medals of Honor, the only man that ever got a double header.* You give him another war and he will get him another one.... I do admire him."

The press was reluctant to let the story die. The wire services carried journalist Cornelius Vanderbilt's revelation that he had been the one who had told Butler the true story about Mussolini. He corrected a few details.

After running down the child, Vanderbilt said, Mussolini had observed the journalist looking back in horror and had patted his knee reassuringly, saying, "Never look back, Mr. Vanderbilt-always look ahead in life."

Italian officials now sought to deny that Vanderbilt had ever ridden in a car with Mussolini.

Butler was appalled, but not too surprised, to read that Ralph T. 
O'Neill, national commander of the American Legion, had presented to Italian Ambassador de Martino a resolution in praise of Mussolini, passed by the National Executive Committee. There were powerful and influential wealthy elements in the Legion leadership who admired Mussolini's shackling of Italian labor unions under the guise of fighting Reds.

Now that he had defeated the attempt of his enemies to court-martial him, Butler revealed to his friends that he intended to go ahead with his original plan to retire at the end of the year. On March 1 he informed the press, barking, "Get this clear-I are not
resigning!
”

*Rogers's mistake was a common error. In addition to Smedley Butler, three other Americans have each won two Congressional Medals of Honor.

Butler now found himself in greater demand than ever as public speaker.

The Alber Lecture Bureau of Cleveland pleaded with him to take a leave of absence and satisfy the groups all over the country clamoring to hear him.

He was offered half of admission fees charged, with a minimum guarantee of $250, $25 a day expenses and railroad 
fare. At the same time 
Philadelphia’s Mayor Mackey asked him if he would assist in raising funds for the city’s Committee for Unemployment Relief. Applying for a two months’ leave of absence to make a speaking tour, he turned over half his fees of about six thousand dollars to the unemployed and also to the Salvation Army, which he respected as being genuinely responsive to the needs of both the poor and the doughboys in trenches.

He explained the impulse for his decision by a letter he had received while he was under arrest during the Mussolini affair. “General,” a veteran had written him, “the stamp on this letter cost me the two of my last four cents, but I wanted you to know that I am for you.”

“I almost cried,” Butler admitted. “I feel that if that poor fellow could give me half of what he had, I can give him half of what I’ve got.”

He was also strongly influenced in his sympathy for the luckless by his aunt, Isabel Darlington, who headed the Chester County Poor Board and fought county authorities vigorously to increase welfare funds.

Publishers begged him for a book. “I am making far more money out of making speeches than I ever could out of writing a book,” he replied practically, “so unless Bobbs-Merrill are going to outbid the public…I would be cutting off my nose to spite my face by writing instead of talking.” But he finally consented 
to dictate his war memoirs to adventure writer Lowell Thomas, who published them as a book, under the title Old
Gimlet Eye.

Aware that his imminent retirement meant a sharp drop in income and an increase in expenses, with little or nothing saved, he sought to organize his time as profitably as possible. He accepted radio offers to relate his experiences in the Marines.

If Butler did not consciously seek publicity, there was little doubt that the headlines sought him out. His rapport with the press was explained by one newsman's observation that he was "colorful copy and a helluva guy." He often said himself, "There are three types of people who understand me-Marines, policemen, and newspapermen." His chief interest in stories about him in the press was less vanity than a determination to disseminate views he held strongly.

With the first ominous rumblings of war beginning to be heard in both Europe and Asia, he was determined to steel the American people against letting themselves be dragged into any more foreign wars. He would tell them the whole truth about the use that had been made of the Marines by the government in the name of protecting democracy and "American interests" abroad.

On August 21, 1931, invited to address an American Legion convention in Connecticut, he made the first no-holds-barred antiwar speech of his career. It stunned all who heard it or read it in the few papers that dared report it in part:

I spent 33 years . . . being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism. . . .I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1 9 0 9 - 1 9 1 2 . I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1 9 1 6 . I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1 9 1 6 . I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City [Bank] boys to collect revenue in. I helped in the rape of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street....

In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil 
went its way unmolested. . . . I had . . . a swell racket. I was rewarded with honors, medals, promotions.... I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate a racket in three cities.

The Marines operated on three continents. . . .

We don't want any more wars, but a man is a damn fool to think there won't be any more of them. I am a peaceloving Quaker, but when war breaks out every damn man in my family goes. If we're ready, nobody will tackle us. Give us a club and we will face them all....

There is no use talking about abolishing war; that's damn foolishness. Take the guns away from men and they will fight just the same. . . . In the Spanish-American War we didn't have any bullets to shoot, and if we had not had a war with a nation that was already licked and looking for an excuse to quit, we would have had hell licked out of us....

No pacifists or Communists are going to govern this country. If they try it there will be seven million men like you rise up and strangle them. Pacifists? Hell, I'm a pacifist, but I always have a club behind my back!

Earlier that same day, before Hoover had had a chance to read the speech, reporters asked the President if he would seek to delay the general's retirement.

"I assume that if General Butler wishes to retire, the authorities will approve," Hoover answered cautiously. "The general is a very distinguished and gallant officer and I have no doubt that if the country has need, it always can secure his services." Next day, when Butler's attack on big business was reported, attempts to get any statement from the White House met with icy silence.

And on that day, providing a punctuation mark to Butler's doubts that the Kellogg-Briand Pact protected any nation from aggression, Japan invaded Manchuria and reduced the pact to a worthless scrap of paper.

On October 1, 1931, friends of Smedley Butler from all stations in life, and from all periods of his career, gathered at Quantico as his two-star command flag was hauled down once more, this lime with full honors. At the age of fifty, after spending all of 
his life but the first fifteen years in a Marine uniform, under fire over 120 times, he retired from the Corps and was once more a civilian.

In his farewell speech to his beloved leathernecks his voice was more than customarily hoarse, and tears misted his fierce glare. "It has been a privilege to scrap for you just as you have scrapped for me," he told them. "When I leave I mean to give every one of you a map showing you exactly where I live. I want you to come around and see me, especially if you ever get into trouble, and I will help you if I can. I can give you a square meal and a place to sleep even if I cannot guarantee you a political job."

He meant every word, gave out the maps, and kept his promise for as long as he lived.

Demands flooded in now for Butler's services as a lecturer. He had embarrassed governments, large and small, including his own, by his relentless candor, but his courage and honesty had ' won the admiration of millions of Americans. His speeches be
came more 
vitriolic than ever, scorching the hides of the powerful and the highly placed.

He met eager requests for articles by magazines and newspaper syndicates with the help of his friend E. Z. Dimitman, who was now night city editor of the Philadelphia
Inquirer.
Dimitman would flesh out his views on war and peace, which Butler then edited and revised to his own satisfaction.

There never seemed to be enough money. Although he received some lecture fees up to $500, the average fee came to $25o and in many cases turned out to be far less. Most of what he managed to earn went into putting Tom Dick through Swarthmore and Smedley, Jr., through California Tech and M.I.T., and paying 
off the house he and Ethel had bought in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania.

It was an old square farmhouse that had been gutted by fire except for its walls. Butler had rebuilt it with glass-enclosed porches and a huge, high hallway in which he erected his two treasured Chinese Blessings Umbrellas, opened like canopies at each end of the hall. He had thought to remodel the house for $35,000, but it had turned out to cost far more, and he was forced to sell most of the land to pay off the mortgage.

As a civilian Butler was close-fisted with money, gently but firmly resisting the endless letters he received begging for handouts, because he had no money to spare. His thrifty wife kept an old, ragged, shabby fur coat in the closet, over thirty years after he had brought it home for her from the Boxer Rebellion. She never wore it, but could not bring herself to throw it away. He himself upset many military organizations by canceling his membership and journal subscriptions without offering any explanation. He was too proud to admit the real reason; he simply had to prune expenses.

Out of uniform, he took pride in his appearance and dressed well but conservatively. Unable to break the traditions of thirty-three years of dress parade, he polished his shoes daily and buffed the buttons on his white, custom-made summer suits. His thought patterns, too, continued to dwell primarily on military concerns.

One of his objectives was to stir up a demand that the Marine Corps be removed from under the thumb of politically appointed desk admirals of the Navy and set up as a separate branch of the armed forces under their own leaders. He gave his reasons in an article called "To Hell with the Admirals! Why I Retired at Fifty," which appeared in
Liberty Magazine
on December 5, 1931:

The clique of desk-admirals who seem to hold sway in the Navy Department in Washington demand an Annapolis man as head of the Marine Corps. They desire to have the Corps an insignificant part of the naval service, a unit directly under their collective thumb.

It dismays and appalls them to learn of the heroic deeds of Marines on foreign 
duty. They feel it detracts from the prestige of the navy. . . .

This group of admirals did everything possible to keep me from being named commandant. . . . And now those officers of the Marine Corps who have been particularly loyal and friendly to me ...
are being transferred all about the country and abroad. . . . As I go I am tempted to say to that shipless clique: "To hell with the admirals!"

Outraged, Admiral Pratt issued a statement denouncing his broadside. The tablet that had been erected in his honor in the Navy Building was removed. Later located and rescued by a Butler Memorial Commission, it was installed in Philadelphia's City Hall after his death.