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When Major General John A. Lejeune (center) stepped down as Marine Corps Commandant, Major General Wendell C. “Buck” Neville (left) took the reins of the Corps. Then Neville succumbed to a stroke and a frenetic race for the commandancy began. Third of these “musketeers,” Smedley D. Butler (right), thought he had the post sewn up—but he was missing one apparently critical credential: a Naval Academy pedigree.
Throughout most of the 1920s, the steady hand of Major General John A. Lejeune had kept the Marine Corps free of petty Washington politics and its senior officers marching in step. But in 1929, Lejeune stunned official Washington and naval observers by opting to step down as Commandant. As his successor, he urged appointment of Major General Wendell C. Neville, a fellow alumnus of the U.S. Naval Academy, holder of the Medal of Honor, and bearer of a distinguished World War I combat record.
Uncontested, the popular and gregarious Neville took the reins of the Marine Corps firmly and was not expected to deviate significantly from Lejeune’s programs or leadership style. Sadly, however, he suffered a debilitating stroke the following year. When Neville died from a second stroke on 8 June 1930, the issue of a successor precipitated an intense period of intraservice acrimony, as four senior Leathernecks vied for the position.1
From the perspective of contemporary journalists, the race to succeed Neville reflected the competition between Naval Academy graduates and officers commissioned from civil life or the ranks, which had persisted since a Naval Academy graduate first became a second lieutenant in 1883. Newspapers reported strong support for Smedley D. Butler—commissioned directly from civil life in 1898—and noted his two Medals of Honor, his lengthy record of tropical campaigning, and his seniority among the Corps’ major generals. No one within naval circles needed a reminder that his father, Representative Thomas S. Butler, until his death in 1928, sat on the powerful House Naval Affairs Committee and often intervened in
Marine Corps affairs at the behest of his ambitious son.
The colorful younger Butler attracted sizable support. His feisty disposition and dogged determination, punctuated with outspoken utterances that either delighted or alarmed listeners, focused most of the attention on his candidacy. His late father’s politically prominent friends quickly recommended Butler to President Herbert Hoover, Secretary of the Navy Charles Francis Adams, and to members of the congressional naval affairs committees. Newspapers in Philadelphia, where Butler had once served on detached service as the Commissioner of Public Safety, chimed in with enthusiastic endorsements. But senior officials in the Hoover administration failed to share this enthusiasm. In Pittsburgh the previous year, he explained in a speech how he and his comrades had rigged elections in Central America. This revelation so outraged Hoover, Adams, and Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson that Butler subsequently received an oral reprimand from Adams.
Appearing to challenge Butler was Brigadier General John H. Russell, a graduate of the Naval Academy, who had spent most of the 1920s serving on detached service with the Department of State as U.S. High Commissioner in Haiti. Russell was slated to command the West Coast Expeditionary Brigade in San Diego, while Butler led the East Coast Expeditionary Brigade at Quantico. Butler’s supporters and Russell’s critics repeatedly cited the incident at El Tejar during the intervention at Vera Cruz in 1914. Supposedly, Russell reported to regimental headquarters that his battalion was surrounded by a force of hostile Mexicans, and he called for immediate reinforcements. When Lejeune—commanding the Second Regi-
Even the newest privates know that this is a showdown between the Naval Academy element and those from civil life and the ranks.
ment of Marines—led in a sizable relief force, he found nothing. Russell’s detractors—especially Butler, who had accompanied Lejeune on the relief mission—labeled the incident “The Battle of Russell’s Run,” and invoked the incident to suggest that Russell lacked the courage and aggressiveness to lead the elite armed service.2
For most observers, however, the significance of Russell’s alleged attack of faint-heartedness failed to affect the increasingly frenetic competition for the commandancy. Instead, the focus seemed concentrated on the rift between officers from the Naval Academy and those commissioned from other sources. Butler himself appeared to believe that Russell—as an embodiment of the Naval Academy clique—constituted his most formidable rival. He revealed to his brother: “Even the newest privates know that this is a showdown between the Naval Academy element and those from civil life and the ranks.”3
Two other contenders failed to capture much attention, but their efforts appeared equally determined. Major General Logan Feland had a war record in France that earned him a Distinguished Service Cross, both the Army and Navy Distinguished Service Medals, and six awards of the Croix de Guerre. Like Butler, Feland was commissioned from civil life during the Spanish-American War; at the time of Neville’s death, he commanded the Department of the Pacific. Almost unnoticed was Brigadier General Ben H. Fuller. The mild-mannered Naval Academy graduate from the Class of 1889, known for his pleasant and unobtrusive disposition in naval circles, served as assistant to the Commandant and thus had been acting Commandant of the Marine Corps since Neville suffered his first stroke on 26 March 1930.
Two additional names appeared on the roster of brigadier generals of the line: Harry Lee and Dion Williams. But neither surfaced among the list of active candidates.
This bitter competition had its origins more than two decades before, during the commandancy of Major General George F. Elliott (1903-1910). Ill-suited for the demands of Washington politics and predisposed to seek solace in alcohol, Elliott experienced difficulties with senior staff officers at Headquarters Marine Corps. A panel of investigators, while faulting everyone involved, recommended an end to the lifetime appointments of commandants and senior staff officers. Changing the titular head of the Marine Corps every four years thus paved the way for partisan political involvement and all but ensured that every change would be fraught with acrimony. Most senior Marines agreed with the sentiments that Butler sputtered to his father: “I suppose thee knows that the Navy has finally put through their four-year tour detail for commandant bill—have at last done us up. I am hoping that some terrible disaster will befall them to discredit the whole crowd before the whole country for their dastardly treatment of us.”4
In the decade after Elliott’s retirement in 1910, a succession of commandants failed to match the younger Butler’s hopes for a veteran campaigner to lead the Marine Corps. The top contender to succeed Elliott was Colonel
Littleton Waller Tazewell Waller, whom Butler referred to as “the greatest soldier I have every known” in his published memoirs. The senior senator from Virginia argued Waller’s case vigorously with the Oval Office. Instead, President William Howard Taft acceded to the urging of Senator Boies Penrose and selected the scion of a powerful Pennsylvania family, Colonel William P. Biddle. Four years later, President Woodrow Wilson and Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels passed over Waller again. The selection of Colonel George Barnett—strongly supported by Capitol Hill Republicans and his roommate from the Naval Academy Class of 1881, Senator John Weeks—only added to the gloom of the strongly opinionated Butler. In his memoirs, he snarled: “[Waller] was in line for Commandant of the Corps. But he didn’t have a fighting chance with the pedants in Washington, because he had not gone to Annapolis.”5
The meddling of civilian politicians in Marine Corps affairs continued. In 1920, Daniels ousted Barnett and replaced him with Lejeune amidst a political maelstrom of major proportions. Although the canny Secretary of the Navy claimed at the time to be only “rewarding those who had been at the cannon’s mouth,” in truth he sought to recompense his good friend. More ominously, the Machiavellian Daniels—a boorish busybody who by then had become the butt of editorial humor—planned for Butler to succeed Lejeune at the helm of the Corps. The promising and talented Lejeune kept the Marine Corps on an even keel long after Daniels left office; the Democrat former Secretary of the Navy’s schemes failed to reach fruition, as three successive Republicans occupied the White House.6
For an officer with expertise in Washington politics, Lejeune, in his correspondence to President Hoover’s personal secretary, speaks reams about his lackluster support for his erstwhile companion- in-arms. In a clumsy letter, he offered little in support for Butler except to note “that General Butler has an excellent military record and has shown much ability as a leader of troops in the field.” Incredibly, Lejeune claimed that “I do not even know, for instance, the names of the officers who are under consideration for the appointment.”7 Lejeune’s unenthusiastic support for Butler suggests that the professional relationship between the two had cooled considerably. After Waller had failed twice, Butler switched his allegiance and professional aspirations to Lejeune. Although both Lejeune and Neville wore the stripe of the despised Naval Academy clique, Butler could still refer to both of them and himself as “the three musketeers of the Marine Corps” in his memoirs. But even Lejeune failed to gain a combat command in World War I for his erstwhile friend; in fact, it took a direct order from Secretary Daniels to Commandant Barnett to ship Butler to France at all. Neither Russell nor Fuller had the opportunity to serve in France during the war.8
Despite Butler’s fears, however, Russell never apparently considered himself a viable candidate. The voluminous correspondence in the Hoover Presidential Library contains no evidence of political support for the veteran
of Haiti. In contrast, however, Feland appears to have marshaled every asset at his disposal in an effort to gain the post, something most Leatherneck historians have overlooked.
At age 61 during the controversy, Feland was the oldest of the four candidates. Like Butler, he began his military career during the Spanish-American War, commanding a company of infantry volunteers. Feland accepted a commission on 1 July 1899 and spent most of the next two decades in a series of assignments in East Asia and the Caribbean. During World War I, he commanded an infantry battalion and then became the Commanding Officer, Fifth Marines, in the Fourth Brigade (Marine), American Expeditionary Forces (AEF). Following the war, he led the brigade of Leathernecks in Santo Domingo; from 1927-29, he commanded the Marines in Nicaragua.
Feland’s principal civilian supporter was Mark L. Requa, a California mining engineer, political leader, and personal friend of President Hoover. Unlike most observers, Requa believed the chief competitors to be Butler and Feland, and he shared this conclusion with Hoover’s personal secretary: “I have an impression that Feland and Butler are about on a par with a little shade the best for Feland. I
have set out to get this promotion for Feland and I don’t want to fall down on it.”1’
For support from the military community, Feland turned to an old Army friend from the AEF, James G. Harbord, who led the Fourth Brigade (Marine), AEF; subsequently, he commanded the Second Division, AEF, of which the Leatherneck brigade was part. Harbord thought highly of Feland, apparently, and a friendship based on mutual admiration flourished. When Harbord turned the brigade over to Neville, he encouraged the promotion of Feland to colonel and recommended that he assume command of the Fifth Marines. In 1924, Harbord urged President Calvin D. Coolidge, in the strongest terms, that Feland be promoted to major general.
When Feland first sought Harbord’s support in his quest for the commandancy, Harbord hesitated. First, he considered it inappropriate to involve himself, because he had not been a Marine Corps officer; then, he counseled Feland that Butler’s appointment was a foregone conclusion in his opinion but that “his outstanding claims for the place [Commandant of the Marine Corps] are somewhat political.” By the last week of July 1930, however, Harbord decided to join Feland at the barricades. First, he sent a telegram to Hoover, requesting that no decision be made until his letter arrived. The same day, Harbord’s letter left New York in support of his old friend’s quest: “There is no officer today in the Marine Corps who had the experience in high command in the war, as it was waged on the Western Front, that fell to the lot of General Feland.”11
Feland launched a flurry of correspondence in hopes of keeping Harbord moving at a rapid pace. In one telegram, Feland asserted that the “appointment lies between Butler and himself,” adding that “I have proofs Butler has said he must rid the Corps of all Second Division men.” A second correspondence added:
The Navy people tell me that above all they don’t want Butler at Headquarters because of his erratic disposition and the fact that they do not believe he will play the game and work with the Navy organization, but rather that he will work solely for his own desire to be always in the limelight and always in controversy.12
Believing that the momentum might shift in favor of Feland, Harbord sent a telegram to Lejeune, asking for his support. Harbord had concluded that the appointment was a contest between Butler and Feland; only later did he learn of the strained relationship between Lejeune and Feland. Then, a shaken Feland informed Harbord that his sources indicated the competition to rest between himself and the most unlikely candidate—Ben H. Fuller.
... the temperamental Leatherneck had once introduced Secretary of the Navy Adams .. . “Gentlemen, I would like you to meet the Secretary of the goddam Navy.”
The avuncular Fuller, called “Gentle Ben” by many Marine Corps historians, lacked the prominence and political support enjoyed by his fellow aspirants. Casual observers tended to dismiss Fuller as lethargic and redundant. Nonetheless, he had earned enough tropical sweat stains and powder burns on his uniforms to warrant consideration for the post of Commandant.
For service in the Philippines following the Spanish- American War, Fuller’s battalion commander commended him for gallantry at the Battle of Novaleta. Then, during the siege to recapture Tientsin during the Boxer Rebellion, Waller cited Fuller for “gallant, meritorious, and courageous conduct” while commanding the unit’s battery of field guns. Years later, Fuller—a solid but uninspiring performer—graduated from both the Command and Staff Course at Fort Leavenworth and the Army War College. In 1918, he received his first star but lost it to postwar reductions; only in 1924 did he regain his flag rank—and then only when he used an important political connection, something that all senior military and naval officers of the era did in order to promote their respective careers.13
Fuller’s daughter, Dorothy Canfield Fuller, had married Chester L. Fordney, son of a Michigan political figure, Congressman Joseph W. Fordney.
In 1922, the congressman began a campaign to restore Fuller’s star by calling in his political favors from a fellow Michigan Republican, Secretary of the Navy Edwin H. Denby; not surprisingly, Fuller became a brigadier general again on 8 February 1924. The elder Fordney thus constituted Fuller’s only political ally—a minor one at that—in his quest for the commandancy.14
Fuller’s trump card in this increasingly frantic quest rested in his position as assistant to the Commandant, a position he had held since 2 July 1928. Senior officers at Headquarters Marine Corps, including the powerful members of the appointed staff, considered Fuller steady and reliable—as did the phalanx of admirals surrounding Secretary Adams. But early in the competition, Feland dismissed Fuller’s aspirations for the office in a classic understatement to his principal political supporter:
Before the war he [Fuller] was senior to all of us; was made a temporary brigadier general during the war, and demoted at the close of it, not having done anything worthwhile ... he would have a sort of sympathy from the Navy people, as an Annapolis graduate, but has never done anything to warrant his serious consideration.15
As political support of the various candidates increased in intensity, Adams turned the matter over to an Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Ernest L. Jahncke. In government or military bureaucracies, senior officials often merely turn to a subordinate for further study and recommendation. In this case, Commander Charles R. Train, Hoover’s naval aide-de-camp, prepared a memorandum that ultimately decided the issue. In it, Train—a graduate of the Naval Academy Class of 1900—claimed that both naval services “seem to be unanimous for General Fuller.” Train noted that Fuller had four years of service left before reaching mandatory retirement age, whereas Feland had only three; thus, Fuller could be expected to serve a full term. Train added that Fuller was a classmate of the new Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral William V. Pratt, “which can only tend to good results.” Train considered Feland the second choice, mostly because “he was not a graduate of the Naval Academy.” He dismissed the claims of both Butler and Russell by asserting that in the case of the former, “I can find no backing for General Butler within the Department [of the Navy]” and in the case of the latter that “neither the Navy nor the Marine Corps believe that he [Russell] should be placed at the head of the Corps after 13 years on detached duty.”16
The White House announcement on 6 August 1930 stunned official Washington. Perhaps to cloak the controversy that Fuller’s nomination would surely generate, the Oval Office linked it to the selection of Douglas MacArthur as the new Chief of Staff of the Army.
Hoover’s press secretary noted that MacArthur was the only ranking officer who had sufficient time remaining before mandatory retirement and could complete a full term in office; thus, the sacrosanct system of seniority had not been violated. Fuller’s nomination to head the Marine Corps, while drawing little attention outside the naval community, produced its share of acrimony from the losing aspirants and their supporters.17
Butler sulked and exclaimed initially that he would not retire but would “hold onto this commission for the next fifteen years and block every Naval Academy man who comes around.” A Philadelphia newspaper criticized Hoover for ignoring seniority in selecting MacArthur and Fuller. The American Legion announced that Butler’s slight would be an issue for discussion at the organization’s annual meeting that month, and it planned to organize a protest. For the most part, however, the responses from Butler’s supporters were more petulant than realistic. Most of them either did not know, or had forgotten, that the temperamental Leatherneck had once introduced Secretary of the Navy Adams to a group of officers at Quantico as “Gentlemen, I would like you to meet the Secretary of the goddam Navy.” Most did recall, however, that Butler had drawn the ire of Adams, a Boston Brahmin. with an anti-imperialist speech the year before that earned him a stiff oral reprimand. But more important than the volatile personalities and volcanic egos involved were the desires of President Hoover and Secretary Adams for a Commandant of the Marine Corps as a compliant member of the administration’s team.18
Although Butler swallowed hard at being passed over, he muted his frustrations until retirement the following year. In a celebrated essay entitled, appropriately, “To Hell with the Admirals,” the Marine Corps’ most outspoken and flamboyant character exploded: “Because I am not a Naval Academy man, a clique of admirals-without-ships determined that I should never be Commandant of the Ma-
rine Corps.” Two years later, he sputtered: “I was now the senior officer in the Marine Corps—the next in line for commandant. But neither my rank nor my record was considered. One staff admiral blistered out that he’d be damned before he’d see me commandant.”19
Never expecting the nomination, Russell remained silent, because he knew that should his good friend Franklin D. Roosevelt gain the White House, the position would be his. Feland, however, took the news badly and exclaimed to Harbord that: “I cannot help feeling deeply humiliated because it is true that I have been cast aside for one of the most worthless men we have ever had in the Corps. All of us know that.” Feland blamed Lejeune, and added: “He [Lejeune] works in an underhanded way always. Probably he worked for Butler for a time, then double-crossed him and went in for Fuller or anything to beat me. I know him like a book and there is nothing too low for him to do.” Less than a month later, the bitter taste of defeat remained in Feland’s mouth. In another letter to Harbord, he growled: “I am not inclined to put any blame on anyone except on Lejeune because I have known and have endured for a long time the results of his malice and underhanded methods.”20
Harbord expressed his disappointment to Lejeune and noted sardonically that “one rule for selecting a chief of staff applied to the Army and another rule applied in the Navy for selecting a major general commandant.” Clearly, the respected Harbord found fault with the Hoover administration’s explanation for its choices to head two of the armed services. Lejeune provided little comment, except to distance himself from the controversy: “I read in this morning’s paper that Brig. Gen. Fuller had been appointed. He is a lively fellow ”21
Lejeune’s role in these stormy events is by far the most difficult to ascertain. The shrewd Louisianan, whose down-home manner masked a calculating political demeanor, orchestrated the selection of Fuller through a series of events that began even before he relinquished the commandancy in 1929. The year before, Herbert Hoover’s election to succeed the affable Calvin Coolidge had alarmed Lejeune.
Although well-known as a team player for any administration, Lejeune’s loyalties to the Democratic Party and friendship with Josephus Daniels and Franklin D. Roosevelt were common knowledge in Washington circles. Lejeune hoped and planned for Neville, a close friend since their days at the Naval Academy, to succeed him. Worried about Neville’s poor health and concerned that the new Republican administration might ignore his recommendation for a successor two years later—when he reached mandatory retirement age—Lejeune merely opted to step down early to ensure the nomination and confirmation of Neville as the next Commandant.22
Even before making his decision public, Lejeune confided in Butler and received the ambitious general’s assurances that Neville’s nomination would not be challenged: “I can do no good in the Marine Corps after you have gone . . . and I would never be any good as Commandant myself,” adding that, “I simply could not get along with politicians. Their insincerity and duplicity would eat my vitals out, and there would be nothing but fighting, with consequent decimation of our Corps.”23 Confident that he had stifled Butler’s ambitions at least momentarily, Lejeune fretted over Feland’s aspirations. Aware of the veteran campaigner’s powerful Republican friendships and his own vulnerability at the hands of the new occupant of the Oval Office, he moved to ensure Neville’s appointment, while he retained the opportunity as a sitting Commandant. Even then, Feland called in his political cards in a feeble attempt to succeed to the commandancy once Lejeune’s decision to step down in favor of Neville became known.24
The intensely circumspect Lejeune’s preference for a successor to Neville remains unclear. Given Butler’s demonstrated erratic political behavior and fondness for irresponsible, headline-grabbing public utterances, his accession to the commandancy presented difficulties with an administration prone to consider the Corps an unnecessary anachronism manned by social misfits and drunkards. His own estrangement from Feland and their apparent mutual dislike eliminated that veteran campaigner, in Lejeune’s eyes. By default, then, he must have favored the best-qualified but highly controversial Russell to succeed Neville. But opposition to the appointment, even with strong support from senior officials within the Department of State, proved all but impossible to overcome.25
The officer whom Feland considered “worthless” proved to be better than expected at the helm of the Marine Corps. For the remainder of the Hoover administration, officers within the Department of the Navy found “Gentle Ben” a formidable adversary whenever attempts were made to tamper with the Corps or emasculate its missions. Despite promises of better cooperation with the Chief of Naval Operations, Fuller often came to loggerheads with Pratt— the “old school tie” notwithstanding. When Adams and Hoover warmed to Mac Arthur’s proposal for the Army to absorb the Leathernecks’ amphibious-assault mission— and, by default, the Marine Corps—as a prudent fiscal measure, Fuller rallied congressional supporters to defeat the proposal. Finally, it was Fuller, not Russell, who ordered the staff and students at Quantico to prepare a manual on landing operations.26
The failure of the Hoover-Adams-MacArthur scheme to obtain congressional approval for transferring the Marine Corps’ amphibious-assault mission to the Army and the genesis of an amphibious-assault doctrine for the Marine Corps, stand as the hallmarks of Fuller’s tenure in office. Butler’s inability to “get along with civilians” and his apparent lack of interest in amphibious warfare could only bode ill for a Marine Corps anxious to accept the mission of amphibious assault, and thus secure a niche within the Department of the Navy. After an absence of almost a decade from intraservice Washington politics and Marine Corps affairs, Russell never proved to be a viable candidate. Feland had demonstrated no enthusiasm for the amphibious assault mission while serving at Headquarters Marine Corps; worse, at least in Lejeune’s view, he had proved less than efficient in supervising the staff and earned his criticism in a subsequent assignment to command the Marines in Nicaragua. On balance, the “admirals without ships” appear to have operated in the best interests of the Marine Corps by selecting Ben Hebard Fuller as the 15th Commandant of the Marine Corps. Ironically, it appears as though the Hoover administration took the only option available.27 “‘Gen. Neville Dead: Leader of Marines,” The New York Times (hereafter, NYT), 9 July 1930, p. 1; “Full Military Honors for General Neville,” NYT, 10 July 1930, p. 25; “Gen. Neville Interred,” Army-Navy Journal (hereafter, A-NJ), 67 (12 July 1930)—1075; and “Death Ends Career of Maj. Gen. Neville,” The Washington Post, 9 July 1930, p. 1.
2Hans Schmidt, Maverick Marine: General Smedley Butler and the Contradictions of American Military History (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1987), p. 214; and Donald F. Bittner, “Conflict Under the Dome: Senator Hugo Black, Major General Smedley Butler, and the Challenged Promotion of Major General John H. Russell,” a paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, Chicago, 27 December 1984. Lejeune’s recollection is in John A. Lejeune, Reminiscences of a Marine (Philadelphia: Dorrance, 1930; reprint ed., Quantico: Marine Corps Association, 1979), pp. 213-214.
'Smedley D. Butler (hereafter, SDB) to Samuel Butler, 28 July 1930, Butler papers, Newtown Square, PA (hereafter, Butler MSS-NTS); see also, “Four Are Mentioned to Head Corps,” NYT, 13 July 1930, II, p. 6.
4SDB to Thomas S. Butler, 30 December 1913, Butler MSS-NTS.
5SDB as told to Lowell Thomas, Old Gimlet Eye: The Adventures of Smedley D. Butler (New York: Farrah & Rinehart, 1933), pp. 36-37; for samples of vintage Butler outrage over Waller’s failure to gain the commandancy in 1914, see SDB to his mother, 31 January and 9 February 1914, Butler MSS-NYS; see also, Wayne A. Wiegand, “The Lauchheimer Controversy: A Case of Political Pressure During the Taft Administration,” Military Affairs 40 (April 1976), 54-59; and “Marine Corps’ New Head,” NYT, 3 February 1914, p. 4.
Mosephus Daniels to Franklin D. Roosevelt, 26 December 1934, container 95, reel 59, Josephus Daniels MSS, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress (hereafter MD-LC). For samples of contemporary accounts critical of Daniels, see “Daniels in the Lion’s Den,” Literary Digest 50 (24 April 1915), 941-942; “Daniels at Bay,” Literary Digest 52 (8 April 1916), 955-956; “Civilianizing the Navy,” A-NJ 51 (July 1914), 1114-1115; “Warships Considered as Universities,” A-Ay 51 (13 September 1913), 48-49; Burton J. Hendricks, “The Case of Josephus Daniels,” World’s Work 32 (July 1916), 281-296; and George Harvey, “The Rt. Hon. N.C.B. [North Carolina Boy], Our First Lord of the Admiralty,” North American Review 201 (April 1915), 481-500.
7John A. Lejeune (hereafter, JAL) to Walter H. Newton, 22 July 1930, container 36, Herbert C. Hoover MSS, Hoover Presidential Library, West Branch, Iowa. "SDB as told to Thomas, Old Gimlet Eye, p. 303; See also, Merrill L. Bartlett, “Old Gimlet Eye,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 112 (November 1986), 6572, and Merrill L. Bartlett, “Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels and the Marine Corps, 1913-1921,” pp. 190-208, in William B. Cogar, ed.. New Interpretations in Naval History: Selected Papers from the Eighth Naval History Symposium (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1989).
“Mark L. Requa to Lawrence Richey, Secretary to the President, 27 March 1930, container 36, Hoover MSS.
10James G. Harbord (hereafter JGH) to Calvin D. Coolidge, 11 March 1924, file 18E, microfilm reel 24, Coolidge MSS, MD-LC. Acting Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., accepted Harbord’s recommendation and urged Feland’s promotion to Coolidge; in the same correspondence, Roosevelt recommended not promoting Frederick M. “Fritz” Wise because of his “objectionable personal habits.” See Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., to President Calvin D. Coolidge, 13 March 1924, file 18E, microfilm reel 24, Coolidge MSS, MD-LC. In a thoughtful note of sympathy to Feland’s widow in 1936. Harbord exclaimed that Feland was “quiet, coolheaded, and brave. . . really my main dependence in many ways when I commanded the Marine Brigade.” JGH to Mrs. Logan Feland, 23 July 1936, correspondence file “F,” Harbord MSS, New York Historical Society (NYHS). “JGH to Logan Feland (hereafter, LF), 18 July 1930, and JGH to President Herbert C. Hoover, 28 July 1930, correspondence file “F,” Harbord MSS, NYHS. The telegram, dated the same day, is in container 36, Hoover MSS. Hoover’s noncommittal response is contained in a curt note, Hoover to JGH, 29 July 1930, correspondence file “H,” Harbord MSS.
,2LF to JGH, 28 July 1930, and LF to JGH, 28 July 1930, correspondence file “F,” Harbord MSS.
‘'Record of Military Service of Marine Corps Officers, 1899-1904, Entry 67, Records of the U. S. Marine Corps, Record Group 127, National Archives and Records Administration (hereafter, NARA).
l4Joseph W. Fordney to JAL, 22 November 1922, and JAL to Fordney, 23 November 1922, 1922 (green) container, Edwin H. Denby MSS, Burton Collection, Detroit Public Library; see also Fordney to Hoover, 9 July 1930, container 36, Hoover MSS.
,5LF to Marc L. Requa, 27 June 1930, container 36, Hoover MSS.
I6CDR Charles R. Train to President Herbert C. Hoover, 21 July 1930, container 36, Hoover MSS.
l7“Gen. MacArthur to Be Next Chief of Staff: Command of Marines Goes to Gen. H. B. Fuller [sic],” A-NJ, 67 (9 August 1930), 1153; and “MacArthur Named Chief of Staff’ NYT, 6 August 1930, p. 1.
‘“Quoted in Hans Schmidt, Maverick Marine: General Smedley D. Butler and the Contradictions of American Military History (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1987) p. 207; see also, editorial, The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, 1 August 1930, p. B12, and “Legion to Protest Neglect of Butler,” The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, 18 August 1930, p. B12. For a sample of vintage Butler outrage, see “To Hell With the Admirals: Why I Retired at Fifty,” Liberty 8 (5 December 1931): 14-16, 18, 20, 22-23.
19SDB, “To Hell with the Admirals,” p. 14, and SDB with Thomas, Old Gimlet Eye, p. 303. Butler’s distaste for graduates of the Naval Academy and General Russell in particular continued unabated. See, for example, SDB to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, 17 July 1933, file 18E, Roosevelt Papers, Roosevelt Presidential Library, Hyde Park, New York; and Donald F. Bittner, “Conflict Under the Dome: Senator Hugo Black, General Smedley D. Butler, and the Challenged Appointment of John H. Russell as Commandant of the Marine Corps,” a paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, Chicago, 28 December 1984.
“LF to JGH, 22 August and 19 September 1930, correspondence file “F,” Harbord MSS.
2IJGH to JAL, 25 August 1930, reel 4, Lejeune MSS, MD-LC; and JAL to JGH, 6 August 1930, correspondence file “L,” Harbord MSS.
22JGH to JAL, 11 February 1929; and JAL to JGH, 22 and 23 March 1929, correspondence file “L,” Harbord MSS.
“SDB to JAL, 18 December 1928, Butler MSS, Marine Corps Historical Center. See also, SDB to JAL, 27 December 1927, in the same collection.
24Mark L. Requa to Lawrence Richey, 23 April 1929, container 36, Hoover MSS. “Congressman Harold Knutson to President Herbert C. Hoover, 15 July and 4 August 1930, container 36, Hoover MSS.
“John Richard Meredith Wilson, “Herbert Hoover and the Armed Forces: A Study of Presidential Attitudes and Policy” (Northwestern University: Dissertation, 1971), pp. 52-87.
“Ben H. Fuller to Commandant, Marine Corps Schools, 28 October 1933, file 1520-30-120, and Fuller to the Secretary of the Navy, 11 April 1933, file 124030, general correspondence, entry 18, RG 127, NARA; Commandant of the Marine Corps to Director, Division of Operations and Training, 29 November 1932, file KG-KW; Director, War Plans Division to the General Board, 10 August 1931, file KA-KV; and Commandant of the Marine Corps to the Chief of Naval Operations, 3 November 1932, file KA-KV, RG 80, NARA.
Lieutenant Colonel Bartlett is coauthor, with Colonel Joseph H. Alexander, USMC (Ret.), of the new Naval Institute Press book, Sea Soldiers in the Cold War: Amphibious Warfare, 1945-1991. He is a long-time contributor to Naval Institute publications and has won several awards for his writing.
This essay is a revision of papers presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Military History, 11 April 1992, Fredericksburg, Virginia; and the Annual Meeting of the Marine Corps Historical Foundation, 25 October 1992, Quantico, Virginia. The author appreciates the generous support for his research from the Naval Academy Research Council and the Marine Corps Historical Foundation.