War Is a Racket

US Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler collected an award cabinet full of medals for his battlefield bravery. But perhaps his bravest act of all was to declare, after his retirement in the early 1930s, who was really winning (and losing) during the bloody clashes. It was business interests, he revealed, who commercially benefited from warfare. War Is a Racket is the title of the influential speech Butler delivered on a tour across the United States, as well the expanded version of the talk