Again, Butler

ARMY & NAVY

Ever since the Navy Department reprimanded him for calling Prime Minister Mussolini a hit-&-run driver (TiME, Feb. 9, et seq.), Major General Smedley Darlington ("Old Gimlet Eye") Butler, U. S. M. C., has been on the alert for international slights. Last week he thought he had found one. He thought he had caught Dantes Bellegarde, the Haitian Minister in Washington, saying that the Haitian fort for capturing which he (Butler) won the Congressional Medal of Honor, was a fictitious fort. Wrathfully General Butler appealed to the Navy Department to have this ugly blot wiped from his record.

On Nov. 27, 1915 General Butler, then a major, led a Marine detachment to Fort Riviere, an old French stronghold on a high hill 20 mi. south of Cape Haitien. It was held by rebellious "Cacos" (native banditti). Major Butler was the third man to enter the fortress through a breach in the fort's thick wall.

Interviewed by the Washington Herald fortnight ago on Fort Riviere's capture, Minister Bellegarde, who speaks poor English, was reported as follows: "We in Haiti have always wondered about that. For there is no Fort Riviere. There never was. We have looked all over our island and there is no such thing. However, for taking Fort Riviere he [General Butler] got the Congressional Medal . . . fighting Marine."

When General Butler saw the newspaper, he rushed to Editrix Eleanor Patterson of the Herald, demanded retractions. Smart Mrs. Patterson stalled for time, tipped off the Press that General Butler had appealed to Secretary of the Navy Adams to create a diplomatic incident. Minister Bellegarde, flustered, protested that he had been misunderstood, misreported. He explained that he had not meant to deny the existence of the fort but merely to state that he had never seen or heard of it because all of its "ill-equipped"' native defenders were killed and a strict news censorship prevailed at the time.

A profusion of conflicting histories of the capture of Fort Riviere broke out over the country. One Marine veteran described a hot tight with Cacos inside the fortress. Against this was set testimony before a Senate Committee in 1925 that Major Butler and his men had slaughtered the unarmed defenders in cold blood. New York's Governor Roosevelt, Assistant Secretary of the Navy at the time, entered the dispute to say that of course there was a Fort Riviere because he had visited it in 1917. A Marine colonel asserted there had been a fortress, but that he had blown it to bits in 1915.

While the controversy stewed, General Butler appeared as guest of honor before the 312th Field Artillery Association in Philadelphia's Elks Club to broadcast over station WELK a facetious account of his exploit. He described his own reluctance to lead into the breach. A Marine sergeant looked at him, he declared, as if to say: "Hell, if you're not going through. . . ." Click! At that point the Butler speech was switched off the air.* A radio announcer apologized for the use of "indecent and obscene language" by "Major General, or General Major, Butler or whoever he is.'' Infuriated, General Butler & friends rushed into the station's control room, shook their fists, got an apology broadcast. Next day the General made plans to go to Oregon on leave from the Marine Corps, to organize a State police force.

*For similar occurrences see p. 13.

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