consumers and taxpayers showered unprecedented fortunes on war producers and certain holders of
raw materials and patents. Hearings in 1934 by tthe "Merchants of Death" -- war profiteers such as Remington Arms and the British Vickershe committee of U.S. Senator Gerald Nye attacked
company --whose salesmen had manipulated many nations into wars, and then supplied all sides
with the weapons to fight them.
Percy Rockefeller and Samuel Pryor's Remington Arms supplied machine guns and Colt automaticpistols; millions of rifles to Czarist Russia; over half of the small-arms ammunition used by the
Anglo-American allies in World War I; and 69 percent of the rifles used by the United States in that
conflict.@s
Samuel Bush's wartime relationship to these businessmen would continue after the war, and wouldespecially aid his son Prescott's career of service to the Harrimans.
Most of the records and correspondence of Samuel Bush's arms- related section of the government
have been burned, "to save space" in the National Archives. This matter of destroyed or misplaced
records should be of concern to citizens of a constitutional republic. Unfortunately, it is a ratherconstant impediment with regard to researching George Bush's background: He is certainly the most (^)
"covert" American chief executive.
Now, arms production in wartime is by necessity carried on with great security precautions. The
public need not know details of the private lives of the government or industry executives involved,and a broad interrelationship between government and private-sector personnel is normal and
useful.
But during the period preceding World War I, and in the war years 1914-1917 when the U.S. was
still neutral, interlocking Wall Street financiers subservient to British strategy lobbied heavily, andtwisted U.S. government and domestic police functions. Led by the J.P. Morgan concern, Britain's
overall purchasing agent in America, these financiers wanted a world war and they wanted the
United States in it as Britain's ally. The U.S. and British arms companies, owned by these
international financiers, poured out weapons abroad in deals not subject to the scrutiny of any
electorate back home. The same gentlemen, as we shall see, later supplied weapons and money toHitler's Nazis.
That this problem persists today, is in some respect due to the "control" over the documentation and
the history of the arms traffickers.
World War I was a disaster for civilized humanity. It had terrible, unprecedented casualties, and
shattering effects on the moral philosophy of Europeans and Americans.
But for a brief period, the war treated Prescott Bush rather well.
In June, 1918, just as his father took over responsibility for relations of the government with the
private arms producers, Prescott went to Europe with the U.S. Army. His unit did not come near
any fire until September. But on August 8, 1918, the following item appeared on the front page of
Bush's home-town newspaper: High Military Honors Conferred on Capt. Bush
For Notable Gallantry, When Leading Allied Commanders Were Endangered, Local Man is
Awarded French, English and U.S. Crosses.
International Honors, perhaps unprecedented in the life of an American soldier, have been conferred
upon Captain Prescott Sheldon Bush, son of Mr. and Mrs. S.P. Bush of Columbus.