War Is a Racket

War Is a Racket is a speech and a 1935 short book by Smedley D. Butler
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Public domain book in 2015, about war and the money made.
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After Butler retired from the US Marine Corps in October 1931, he made a nationwide tour in the early 1930s giving his speech "War Is a Racket". The speech was so well received that he wrote a longer version as a short book published in 1935. His work was condensed in Reader's Digest as a book supplement, which helped popularize his message. In an introduction to the Reader's Digest version, Lowell Thomas, who wrote Butler’s oral autobiography, praised Butler's "moral as well as physical courage".
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