1931.01.31 “Smedley Butler Lecture Tour”
by John Tinney McCutcheon (1870-1949)
15 x 22 in., ink on drawing board
Coppola Collection
On the Purdue campus, where he was a student, McCutcheon (class of 1889) is memorialized in a coeducational dormitory, John T. McCutcheon Hall. The lobby displays an original of one of his drawings, a nearly life-size drawing of a young man.
After college, McCutcheon moved to Chicago, Illinois, where he worked at the Chicago Morning News (later: Chicago Record) and then at the Chicago Tribune from 1903 until his retirement in 1946. McCutcheon received the Pulitzer Prize for Cartoons in 1932.
The “Mussolini affair” refers to an incident when, during a speech on “how to prevent war” delivered to the Philadelphia Contemporary Club on January 19, 1931, General Smedley Butler recounted a story told to him by journalist Cornelius Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt had been in a car with Benito Mussolini when they ran over and killed a young boy who was crossing the street. Mussolini told the driver to continue driving and that the boy’s life was insignificant. Mussolini and his government were at the time being widely praised by all of the mainstream U.S. media, and the American elite generally. They considered Mussolini’s Italy to be a great model that the U.S. should follow. They particularly admired his efforts to crush labor unions and communism.
The Italian government protested, Rome newspapers denounced the speech as “insolent and ridiculous,” and Mussolini issued a categorical denial: “I have never taken an American on a motor-car trip around Italy, neither have I run over a child, man or woman.” Secretary of State Stimson issued a formal apology to Mussolini for “discourteous and unwarranted utterances by a commissioned officer of this government on active duty.” Smedley was placed under arrest and ordered court-martialed by President Hoover. FDR was among those who came to Butler’s defense. The court-martial charges against Butler were eventually dropped.
He [Butler] fired a parting shot in an article entitled “To Hell With the Admirals! Why I Retired at Fifty,” published in Liberty magazine (Dec.5, 1931). He specified that he intended to “do a little swatting of some heads of some low-down-bums who tried to ruin my life for me.”
The Italian Foreign Office, having denied Mussolini ever met Vanderbilt, searched its records and conceded that Mussolini received him in 1926 but “emphatically” reiterated that there had been no car ride. Vanderbilt himself refused comment and then evasively accused Butler of having “garbled” the story. In 1959, Vanderbilt substantially confirmed Smedley’s version. He related a four-day boisterous rip with Mussolini through northern Italy: “A small child standing on the right tried to beat the Fiat across the road. The car shuddered, and I felt the car wheels go up, then come down. I turned quickly to look. I can still see the little crumpled-up body lying in the road. Then I felt a hand on my right knee and I heard a voice saying, ‘Never look back, Mr. Vanderbilt, never look back in life.”‘