which would otherwise be unemployed, and hence cause no withdrawal of productive resources from   
truly productive uses. This view has been advanced seriously with respect to Germany.
 
     
 
 
Such an argument can have no validity, except in periods of depression or economic stagnation   
and for a country in which the government is unwilling to engage in productive employment-creating   
expenditures. Expenditures for armament could, with equal effect on unemployed labor and resources,   
be directed toward more produoctive ends. It is, however, impossible to appraise the social   
consequences, good as well as bad, of a year's mobilization with the discipline and other effects   
on the late adolescent male population.
 
 
 
CONCLUSION
 
     
 
 
The burden of armaments can be visualized concretely by comparing their cost with that of   
public utilities and other socially desirable investments. In 1938 Great Britain spent the   
equivalent of $1,820 million on armaments. This amount was more than enough to have built and   
equipped the Santa Fe Railroad (operating about 115 thousand miles of track) one and one-half times,   
or to have constructed well over three Panama Canals.
 
     
 
 
The comparison made above between the costs of preparations for the first and second world   
wars, indicates how total war has increased the cost of preparedness. It suggests also that in   
the future, adequate preparations for defense by any single country, or a limited group of   
countries, can be made only at ruinous cost.