Force of Arms

It is a familiar irony that the progress of civilization has turned the earth into an elaborately sophisticated armed camp. During 1969-70, the money that human beings spent on the means of killing one another rose to an alltime peak of $204 billion--as much as the income produced in a year by the 1.8 billion people in the poorer half of the world's population.

There were, however, some mildly hopeful signs in an annual survey of military spending issued last week by the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Discounting inflation, last year's total military outlays actually represented a slight decline. But developing countries continue to buy arms at a rate outstripping the growth in their gross national products. One of the commission's more melancholy statistics revealed that global manpower in armed forces and military-related employment was, at latest count, close to 60 million --the equivalent of the population of West Germany.

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