by

Jansen Estrup

(A review of the book The Plot to Seize the White House

by Jules Archer)

Born into an influential Quaker family, Smedley Butler became so avid a militant that his parents used their considerable influence to obtain for him a USMC commission as a 15½ year old lieutenant. Before he was sixteen he won praise leading Marines against Spanish forts in 1898 Cuba. By 1900 he was doing it again in the Boxer rebellion in China as a 19 year old captain, then Panama, Philippines, Nicaragua and Haiti, where he served as military governor of the island nation holding the Haitian rank of major-general. He might have earned the Medal of Honor in all of those campaigns, his troops and fellow officers say, except that before 1914 Marine commissioned officers were not eligible for that award. In 1914 he slipped ashore to spy on Mexican fortifications at Vera Cruz and was awarded the Medal for those exploits, but he refused it. Even when the Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin Delano Roosevelt sought him out in the field to personally decorate him, Butler refused. But he did accept promotion to lieutenant colonel.

His organizational abilities are credited with saving thousands of American lives in the terrible swampland camp and hospital conditions of 1917-18 France, and he was awarded the US Army and France's highest awards.

Well, you get the picture. He did go on to accept two other awards of the Medal and became the youngest Brigadier General and also Major General in Marine Corps history. Political and internal conflicts with Navy brass kept him from becoming Commandant of the Marine Corps and he retired in 1930 after another stint of gunboat diplomacy in China and a national scandal over the Navy's newest attempt to discredit him by courts-martial.

All of this made him the indispensable man to a group of multi-millionaires, bankers and other fascist admirers of Mussolini and Hitler who sought to use the American Legion's membership to make an armed takeover of the Roosevelt White House and 'new deal'. Boasting backers with names like DuPont and J. P. Morgan, they wooed Butler relentlessly to lead their proposed 500,000 man army in the rebellion while he played along to discover the extent of this 'American Liberty League' conspiracy and its members.

But Butler had no love for the wealthy and considered the American Legion betrayers of the military. His care was for the enlisted soldier, the veteran who had been promised bonuses and camped on the Capital grounds in protest. He came to encourage them while Herbert Hoover ordered Douglas MacArthur to disperse 'the rabble', which he did with cavalry and tanks.

Behind the drama of the Great Depression this struggle waged for several years, mostly in secret.

Butler is famous for the coast-to-coast anti-war speeches he gave published under the title War is A Racket and for exposing the plot to forcefully overthrow FDR's administration. Much of his testimony before Congress is quoted in Archer's book, including parts which were classified for 40 years.

Archer's book is fast moving, easily readable and in light of current struggles, quite topical (it was published in 1970). Re-issued in 2015 because we needed to know that our current struggle is not the first time foreigners and Fascist ideals have tried to destroy America. The American Liberty League and its gold standard backers wanted a Man on a White Horse to lead them, then. FDR got A Man in His Time. Who is our Indispensable Man (or Woman)?

Sadly, the general died of stomach cancer (and a broken heart?) in 1940. The Navy named a Benson Class destroyer after him and USS Butler (DD-636) served throughout World War II. Also named for him is Camp Smedley Butler on Okinawa.