EDITORIALS:

...Every dollar spent on arms means less food somewhere else...

...Adding the inventory of other major powers would double the total nuclear stockpile, amounting to tons of high explosives for every man, woman and child on the globe...

...the war machine has gone berserk...

...at a cost of only $1.5 billion a year, it is calculated that illiteracy could be virtually eliminated in five years...

...In 1973, the latest year for which global figures are available, the world total of expenditures for military purposes was $240 billion...

...alone had already spent $400 billion on its strategic nuclear force, and each year spent another $20 billion for maintenance and expansion...

...In a hungry world, such profligate military spending has tragic consequences...

...Another way to put it: every hour of every day the nations of the world were spending $30 million on their armed forces and armaments...

...Worldwide medical research gets $4 billion a year...

...In short, for a fraction of what we now spend on arms every year, we could change the face of the earth...

...What does the world's expenditure of $240 billion a year for armaments mean...

...Is it not time to make a start...

...The U.S...

...That such a headline could be considered even faintly reassuring is a good indication of the basic insanity of the present worldwide arms race, especially in the area of nuclear weapons, which Pope Pius XII rightly called "infernal creations...

...the superpowers have more than enough to kill off everyone on the face of the globe...

...That sum is larger than the entire gross national product of the populations of Africa, the Middle East and South Asia put together...

...Even less than that amount would treble present aid for agricultural development...

...The solution to many of the worst problems, that plague the world depends primarily on an end to the terrible burden imposed' by the arms race and on the use of die money saved for vitally necessary steps toward world justice-the only foundation for a true and lasting peace...

...military research and development takes a grand total of $25 billion...

...The world's annual military spending is more than is spent altogether for the education of over one billion children...

...The U.S...

...The cost of maintaining the world's armament staggers the imagination...

...As the Council Fathers of Vatican II noted, "the arms race is an utterly treacherous trap for humanity, and one which injures the poor to an intolerable degree...

...Given facts like these, it is obvious that the arms race has become a process that is almost out of human control...

...One bomb set off in the atmosphere and producing a cataclysmic chain reaction, that is...

...it is twice the public expenditure for health care for the total world population...

...and the USSR alone spend more for military purposes than the combined annual incomes of over one billion people in 33 of the world's poorest nations...

...And every dollar that is now spent on arms represents the theft of food from the mouths of the earth's poor...

...nuclear stockpile by itself translates into a potential kill-power of 12 times the present world population...

...In 1973 it is estimated that 460 million people were suffering from severe malnutrition...

...And what better time for a new beginning than at the birthday of him we call the Prince of Peace?of Peace...

...For only $4 billion annually, 200 million children would be provided special feeding programs...

...In nuclear weapons the United States has a stockpile of 8,000 megatons, equivalent to 615,385 Hiroshimas...

...CHRISTMAS AND PEACE Good news for Christmas in a recent New York Times headline: "Experts Doubt View That Atom Blast Could End AH Life...

...Just a portion of the amount we spend on arms each year would meet crisis needs at home and abroad and provide long-term assistance to improve food production...

...The use of nuclear weapons would be the ultimate human madness, but even their maintenance on the present scale and their continuous expansion constitute a crime against humanity...

...Out of the present world population, more than 700 million are unable to read or write...

...What this means in practice: the U.S...

...The same thing can be said of the ever-mushrooming national and international explosion of expenditures for non-nuclear armaments...

...In what started as a defensible search for security, mankind is in danger of losing all contact with reality...

...it is almost twenty times the value of the foreign economic assistance of all nations put together...

...By the end of this decade, it is estimated, total world military outlays in the '60s and 70s will have exceeded the incredible sum of $4,329 billion...

...An article by Ruth Leger Sivard in the April 1975 issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists provides some illustrations of the power and fearful appetite of the armaments monster we have created...