What Lock on the Door?

What can a small neutral nation such as Austria do to protect itself in a world of superpowers? Obviously, not very much. Restricted by its 1955 State Treaty to small-bore "conventional" weapons and by reasons of budget confined to only $18 million worth of new ones a year, Austria has had to adopt what one Defense Ministry spokesman calls a "lock-on-the-door" policy: "It isn't foolproof, but the housebreaker needs time to get in, and by then you can telephone the police."

Austrians last week were wondering whether their lock would hold even long enough for a yelp for help. For nearly a month, the nation's two leading par ties had been locked in a noisy wrangle over defense spending, and in the midst of it, conservative Defense Minister Georg Prader was hard put to explain how he blew this year's entire arms budget on 36 Swiss Oerlikon antiair craft guns. That brought the self-righteous charge from a Socialist Party news paper that the price of one Oerlikon would pay for 125 new workers' apartments. More to the point, however, was the fact that although the Oerlikon is deadly against low-flying planes, its maximum range is 12,000 feet--which even a Piper Cub can get over.

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