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a national economic necessity. Then in good time defense calls for
the seizure of some neighbor's territory or of some remote strategic
island or the rectification of frontiers for military purposes. The
raw materials of war must be accumulated and these perhaps are
found in the hands of weaker small peoples with whom quarrels are
quickly brewed. National pride, the dignity of the race, patriotism
—all these well-known and well-exploited emotions are played on.
And of course, as the apprehensions of the people grow, the army
grows with them, and so, too, the unbalanced budget—acclaimed
by the most energetic conservative enemies of big budgets.
These policies, of course, could not be developed in Italy without
the aid of the purple people, the inflammable spirits who love adventure
and the dangerous life, who swell to ecstasy when the war
drums roll but whose zeal for high emprise would be unavailing if
harder and more cynical motives did not inspire the realists in
power.
Many explanations of this phenomenon have been offered. In Ger-
mechanic multitude that stayed at home should not go without their share of the public
salaries, and yet should not have them given them for sitting still and doing nothing, to
that end, he thought fit to bring in among them, with the approbation of the people, these
vast projects of public buildings and designs of works, that would be of some continuance
before they were finished, and would give employment to numerous arts, so that the part
of the people that stayed at home might, no less than those that were at sea or in garrisons
or on expeditions, have a fair and just occasion of receiving the benefit and having their
share of the public moneys."
Plutarch then enumerates the trades that were aided by this: "The materials were stone,
brass, ivory, gold, ebony, cypress-wood; and the arts of trades that wrought and fashioned
them were smiths and carpenters, moulders, founders and braziers, stone-cutters, dyers,
goldsmiths, ivory-workers, painters, embroiderers, turners; those again that conveyed them
to the town for use, merchants and mariners and ship-masters by sea and by land, cartwrights,
cattle-breeders, wagoners, rope-makers, flax-workers, shoemakers and leather
dressers, road makers, miners. . . . Thus to say all in a word, the occasions and services of
these public works distributed plenty through every age and condition."
Here was an authentic PWA four hundred years before Christ. But this would not be
complete if we did not name the source whence these moneys came. The Delian League,
composed of the Greek cities opposed to Sparta, had created a fund to be preserved for use
in the event of the inevitable war against Sparta and Corinth. This fund consisted of yearly
contributions of coin by all these cities. Athens was entrusted, as leader of the League,
with the custody of this great and ever-growing treasure which was kept on the Isle of
Delos. It was this fund, and not taxation, to which Pericles turned to finance his public
works and other government spending activities. And so we understand when Plutarch says:
"This [the public works program] was of all his actions in the government which his
enemies most looked askance on and cavilled at in the popular assemblies, crying out how
that the Commonwealth of Athens had lost its reputation and was ill-spoken of abroad for
removing the common treasure of the Greeks from the Isle of Delos into their own custody."
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