Hoarse Marine

OLD GIMLET EYE: ADVENTURES OF SMEDLEY D. BUTLER--as told to Lowell Thomas--Farrar & Rinehart ($2.75). Now that Major-General Smedley Darlington Butler has retired, the U. S. Marine Corps is not so often in the news. Few soldiers have been more tanned by the limelight. A fighter who enjoys his reputation, General Butler started scrapping early in life and has continued to fight it out on that line, letting the news stories fall where they may. With the help of Ghost-Writer Lowell Thomas he has laid all his scraps end to end, called it a life. Born a Pennsylvania Hicksite Quaker 52 years ago, Smedley Butler is "still one in good standing, so far as I know." Sixteen when the Spanish-American War was fanned into flame, young Smedley was eager to enlist, threatened to run away unless his parents gave their permission. Anomalous Quakers, they complied, and as his father was a Congressman. Smedley started his martial career as a 2nd lieutenant. Once with the Marines in Cuba, his greenness soon seasoned into tougher timber; he decided that he liked the life. He saw quite active service in the Philippines, in China, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Haiti. Twice he won the Congressional Medal of Honor--for his part in the fighting at Vera Cruz, in 1914, and for the capture of Fort Riviera (whose existence Haiti's Minister to the U. S., Dantes Bellegarde, two years ago attempted to deny). Butler says he was sidetracked during the War because of an ''honest expression of opinion," was finally sent to France only to be put in command of the inglorious base camp at Brest. In 1924 Devil-Dog Butler made his biggest headlines when he was given leave of absence from the Marines to act as Director of Public Safety in Philadelphia. He announced that he would dry up the city in 48 hours. Two years later, disgusted with politics, politicians and Philadelphia, he returned to the Marine Corps, leaving Philadelphia as wet as ever. Scarcely had he arrived at his new post at San Diego when he piled Ossa on the Pelion of his unpopularity by having his Navy host (whom he ranked) court-martialed for drunkenness.

A good hater, Butler never hesitates to call names or mention them. There was little love lost between himself and former Secretary of the Navy Charles Francis Adams. Once when the Secretary was inspecting Quantico, which Butler took pride in believing was the "finest post in the U. S.," Adams humphed at everything he saw, finally pointed to a stadium Butler was building for his men, snorted: "That's one of your damned follies." Last big row in which Butler was the central figure came in 1929, when he was arrested and ordered court-martialed for retailing an anecdote in which Mussolini figured as a hit-and-run driver. The affair passed off with a reprimand, but in October 1931, having been passed over for Commandant of the Marine Corps although he was the ranking officer, Scrapper Butler finally left the Marines. But he concludes with hoarse defiance: "There's plenty of fight in me yet."

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