Evening star., 1931-12-15
The Cost of Armalnents.

4Hc SOSl VI hTuudlUculS.
On the threshold of the Geneva Dis
armament Conference the Foreign Pol
| icy Association performs useful service
in issuing comprehensive report on
the worlds military and naval estab-
lishments. The report is compiled from
| the official figures forwarded to the
League of Nations by the various gov
ernments invited to participate in the
Forthcoming effort to beat Mother
Earth's swords into pruning hooks. 1t
is an undoubtedly expensive arsenal Of
| weapons that she now maintains, rep
resenting a total expenditure in 1880 of
S4,500,0 100000. Seven great powers
Great Britain, France, Italy, Soviet
Russia, Japan, Germany and the United
States-spent two-thirds of that amount,
or s2,95s 100000.
The Foreign Policy Association in
F., dicates that the ominous feature of
these figures is the fact that arma-
ment expenditure is steadily rising.
The total 1880 costs were 80 per cent
higher than the principal seven powers
spent in 1926 and 81 per cent more
than they were devoting to ornaments
in the last pre-war year of 1918. "Ex-
Guiding Germany, whose armamentS
were drastically reduced under the
Versailles treaty" the report states,
the remaining six great powers were
spending 65 per cent more upon arms
in 1880 than in 1913"
Purely budgetary analyses of arma-
mentS may be misleading in many
directions. The United States, for ex-
ample, is credited with having spent
S727700,0 in 1890, or nearly $780,
100000 more than the next highest
figure of s535,O00,0O0 Frances outlay.
But it is matter of common
knowledge that the costs of produc-
ton OF armaments in this country,
largely because of our wage scale. are
much heavier than abroad. 1t is
equally we'll known that Uncle Sam
feeds and pays his soldiers and sailors
better than those occupations arc
cared for and compensated elsewhere.
Nor does the Foreign Policy Associa-
ton study OF armaments, complete and
informative as it is in every other re-
spect, contain any suggestion of the
gigantic especially in our own
case-Which are safeguarded by arma-
ments. The American people look upon
their military and naval expenditure as
the premium they pay each year on ma
t!onal life insurance. In 1880 that pre-
MUM worked out at roundly seven dol
lars per capita. Is that an excessive
rate for the l25000,000 men, women
and children of the United States to
pay for peace, domestic tranquility, de-
tense Of our far-flung coasts and bor-
ders from foreign invasion, protection
OF our possessions in the Atlantic, the
Pacific and the Panama Canal Zone,
the safety Of our vast sea borne COM
merce and the assurance that the Mon
roe Doctrine will be kept inviolate?
None Of these arguments initiates
against the genuine desire of the Amer
lcan Government and people to go
along with the rest of the world in any
rational scheme of armament curtail-
ment. President Hoover's oft-pro-
claimed assurance of our readiness to
reduce as much as any other nation,
provided the reduction process is uni
versal, unquestionably commands ma
tlonal approval 1t will be the United
States keynote at Geneva, though, in
asmuch as land armaments, rather than
navies, are presumably the matters
chiefly to be dealt with there, it is diff
cult to imagine just what Americas
contribution to further reduction can
be
Our active military establishment
totals an organized force of only
139,957 men, which is less than one
half Of one per cent of the ccuntry,s
population. There are only one or
two countries in the whole world, in
Guiding treaty-disarmed Germany, that
have SO few of their people under arms.
Relatively speaking, the United States,
from an army standpoint, is already
disarmed
The tag day here, thank goodness
has gone forever to join the Spring
food, malaria, horse cars and the COM
mon drinking cup!