ABSTRACT
The expenditure on armaments is, at the present time, incomparably higher than it has ever been before. According to the above-mentioned Report, the United States is now spending 45 billion dollars per annum on military preparation. ‘In the United States about 10 per cent of gross national product is now devoted to military purposes. It is estimated that 15 per cent of the gross national product of the Soviet Union is similarly devoted.’ If the world goes on as it is, neither better nor worse, it is estimated that, from the present time till 1970, from 1,500 to 2,000 billion dollars will have been spent on armaments, but this will certainly prove to be an underestimate, since new inventions will necessitate increasingly expensive weapons. We cannot tell what new discoveries will be made, but we can be pretty certain that there will be such discoveries. Some of them might be fairly cheap: for example, methods of bacteriological warfare. It should be possible to poison the Mississippi and the Volga, and thereby to render uninhabitable all the regions depending on water from those rivers. If a suitable method of delivery of bacteria were discovered, immense damage could be done with rather little expenditure. But most of the novelties
to be expected cannot cause death so cheaply. Take, for example, control of the weather. The philosophers of Laputa reduced rebellious provinces to obedience by causing the shadow of their island to plunge the rebels into perpetual night. It should become possible, before very long, to secure that some large enemy region should have either too much or too little rain, or that its temperature should be lowered to a point where it would no longer produce useful crops. It may also become possible to melt the Polar ice and, thereby, submerge large regions which are only slightly above sea level. Such measures, however, are not yet possible, but there are others, both more terrible and even more expensive, which have lately entered the domain of feasible lunacy.
