When crimes are committed during military operations, sentences are heavier than when the same offenses are committed under conditions where duress is not a factor. During combat or wartime circumstances, legislative acts call for the most severe penalties. THE MILITARY ESTABLISHMENT AND THE NATIONAL ECONOMY According to official government pronouncements relating to the state budget, 471 million leks (5 leks equal US$1) were appropriated for defense expenditures in 1970. That amount is 9.2 percent of the total planned expenditures of 5,110 million leks, or about 225 leks per inhabitant during the year. Whether or not all expenses that would fall within the defense category in Western countries are included in these figures is not known. It is the practice in some Communist governments to distribute peripheral defense costs among other agency appropriations (see ch. 8, Economic System). The defense budget was increased drastically in 1969 and 1970 over the levels of earlier years, apparently in reaction to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. The midyear calculated expenditures for 1969 represented an increase of about 38 percent over those of 1968, and 1970 projections showed another 12.2 percent anticipated increase over 1969. The burden represented by 225 leks per person can be illustrated by relating it to income and costs of living. In 1967, for example, a typical head of family worker earned about 7,200 leks per year. The average family group consisted of between five and six persons, and about 90 percent of its earnings was required for food and housing. In the preponderant majority of situations where there was only one wage earner per family, therefore, per capita defense costs exceeded everything that the family had available for all uses except food and shelter. The 50,000 men in the regular and security forces represent about 2.4 percent of the population, but each annual draft takes a number that is equal to roughly one-half of the young men that become nineteen years old during the year. There is no reliable information as to how willingly the average citizen performs his military service or whether or not his contribution is appreciated by the remainder of the people. The controlled-communications media do everything possible to promote good morale among those in the service and to show that the public supports them. FOREIGN MILITARY RELATIONS Small, underdeveloped, and suffering continually from an unfavorable balance of trade, Albania has always needed assistance to maintain even a small military force. Accepting aid from Italy before World War II resulted in a severe curtailment of national initiative in the employment of the forces and probably contributed to their immobility at the time of the Italian invasion in 1939.