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directed almost wholly at the ambitious chieftains, the warlike
statesmen, and the thrifty munitions barons who are supposed to be
behind it. They are, of course, behind it. But they would not get
very far were it not for the fact that a large military establishment
draws countless thousands annually out of the overstocked labor
market while it enables the government to set up and support a
large industry which employs even more men than are in the army.
Among all the means for producing government-created income
none is so successful as militarism.
In 1895 Italy was spending five times as much on the army and
navy as on public works. To ask an Italian statesman to agree to
disarmament before the Great War would have been to ask him to
liquidate the largest industry in Italy. Nothing could have been
more futile than to offer such a proposal to an Italian government
always on the edge of the precipice of economic disaster. And while
there was always a certain amount of agitation against militarism
and conscription in Italy, the system in fact always had the approval
of the liberal and labor leaders. The aggressive supporters of large
military expenditures, however, were the conservatives, also the
most aggressive enemies of the policy of spending. Thus it was because
the government could get public agreement for loans for this
purpose and because such loans were essential to the policy of spending
which kept the floundering economic system going that the
militaristic policy remained so vital and vigorous an institution in
Italy—and in every other continental country. It is estimated that
the costs of the army and navy plus the indirect costs arising out
of debt charges incurred for this purpose accounted for 63 per cent
of all the costs of government.
I must not leave this whole subject of spending and the means
employed to spend, including militarism, without observing that
there is nothing new in it. It is as old as civilized government. And,
what is more, the protagonists of it have understood precisely what
they are doing. 1
*The following excerpts from Plutarch's Pericles in the Lives make very clear how well
these two instruments of state policy were understood by that early republican statesman.
"Pericles, finding himself come short of his competitors in wealth and money, by which
advantages the other was enabled to take care of the poor, inviting every day some one or
other of the citizens that was in want to supper and bestowing clothes on the ancient
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