(actual-attempt-of-fascist-takeover-of-USA)-(1973

The Indispensable Man 121
off the house he and Ethel had bought in Newtown Square,
Pennsylvania.
It was an old square farmhouse that had been gutted by fire
except for its walls. Butler had rebuilt it with glass-enclosed porches
and a huge, high hallway in which he erected his two treasured Chinese
Blessings Umbrellas, opened like canopies at each end of the hall. He
had thought to remodel the house for $35,000, but it had turned out to
cost far more, and he was forced to sell most of the land to pay off the
mortgage.
As a civilian Butler was close-fisted with money, gently but
firmly resisting the endless letters he received begging for handouts,
because he had no money to spare. His thrifty wife kept an old, ragged,
shabby fur coat in the closet, over thirty years after he had brought it
home for her from the Boxer Rebellion. She never wore it, but could
not bring herself to throw it away. He himself upset many military
organizations by canceling his membership and journal subscriptions
without offering any explanation. He was too proud to admit the real
reason; he simply had to prune expenses.
Out of uniform, he took pride in his appearance and dressed well
but conservatively. Unable to break the traditions of thirty-three years
of dress parade, he polished his shoes daily and buffed the buttons on
his white, custom-made summer suits. His thought patterns, too,
continued to dwell primarily on military concerns.
One of his objectives was to stir up a demand that the Marine
Corps be removed from under the thumb of politically appointed desk
admirals of the Navy and set up as a separate branch of the armed
forces under their own leaders. He gave his reasons in an article called
"To Hell with the Admirals! Why I Retired at Fifty," which appeared in
Liberty Magazine on December 5, 1931:
The clique of desk-admirals who seem to hold sway in the
Navy Department in Washington demand an Annapolis man as head
of the Marine Corps. They desire to have the Corps an insignificant
part of the naval service, a unit directly under their collective thumb.
It dismays and appalls them to learn of the heroic deeds of Marines
on foreign