nation’s existence. Indeed, we can justly say that the whole life struggle of a Folk, in truth, consists in safeguarding the territory it requires as a general prerequisite for the sustenance of the increasing population. Since the population grows incessantly, and the soil as such remains stationary, tensions perforce must gradually arise which at first find expression in distress, and which for a certain time can be balanced through greater industry, more ingenious production methods, or special austerity. But there comes a day when these tensions can no longer be eliminated by such means. Then the task of the leaders of a nation’s struggle for existence consists in eliminating the unbearable conditions in a fundamental way, that is, in restoring a tolerable relation between population and territory.
In the life of nations there are several ways for correcting the disproportion between population and territory.
The most natural way is to adapt the soil, from time to time, to the increased population. This requires a determination to fight and the risk of bloodshed. But this very bloodshed is also the only one that can be justified to a Folk. Since through it the necessary space is won for the further increase of a Folk, it automatically finds manifold compensation for the humanity staked on the battlefield. Thus the bread of freedom grows from the hardships of war. The sword was the path breaker for the plough. And if we want to talk about human rights at all, then in this single case war has served the highest right of all: it gave a Folk the soil which it wanted to cultivate industriously and honestly for itself, so that its children might some day be provided with their daily bread. For this soil is not allotted to anyone, nor is it presented to anyone as a gift. It is awarded by Providence to people who in their hearts have the courage to take possession of it, the strength to preserve it, and the industry to put it to the plough.
Hence every healthy, vigorous Folk sees nothing sinful in territorial acquisition, but something quite in keeping with nature. The modern pacifist who denies this holy right must first be reproached for the fact that he himself at least is being nourished on the injustices of former times. Furthermore, there is no spot on this Earth that has been determined as the abode of a Folk for all time, since the rule of nature has for tens of thousands of years forced mankind eternally to migrate. Finally the present distribution of possessions on the Earth has not been designed by a higher power, but by man himself. But I can never regard a solution effected by man as an eternal value which Providence now takes under its protection and sanctifies into a law of the future. Thus, just as the Earth’s surface seems to be subject to eternal geological transformations, making organic life perish in an unbroken change of forms in order to discover the new, this limitation of human dwelling places is also exposed to an endless change. However, many nations, at certain times, may have an interest in presenting the existing distribution of the world’s territories as binding forever, for the reason that it corresponds to their interests, just as other nations can see only something generally manmade in such a situation which at the moment is unfavourable to them, and which therefore must be changed with all means of human power. Anyone who would banish this struggle from the Earth forever would perhaps abolish the struggle between men, but he would also eliminate the highest driving power for their development; exactly as if in civil life he would want to eternalise the wealth of certain men, the greatness of certain business enterprises, and for this purpose eliminate the play of free forces, competition. The results would be catastrophic for a nation.
The present distribution of world space in a one sided way turns out to be so much in favour of individual nations that the latter perforce have an understandable interest in not allowing any further change in the present distribution of territories. But the overabundance of territory enjoyed by these nations contrasts with the poverty of the others, which, despite the utmost industry, are not in a position to produce their daily bread so as to keep alive. What higher rights would one want to oppose against them if they also raise the claim to a land area which safeguards their sustenance?
No. The primary right of this world is the right to life, so far as one possesses the strength for this. Hence, on the basis of this right, a vigorous nation will always find ways of adapting its territory to its population size.
Once a nation, as the result either of weakness or bad leadership, can no longer eliminate the disproportion between its increased population and the fixed amount of territory by increasing the productivity of its soil, it will necessarily look for other ways. It will then adapt the population size to the soil.
Nature as such herself performs the first adaptation of the population size to the insufficiently nourishing soil.
Here distress and misery are her devices. A Folk can be so decimated through them that any further population increase practically comes to a halt. The consequences of this natural adaptation of the Folk to the soil are not always the same. First of all a very violent struggle for existence sets in, which only individuals who are the strongest and have the greatest capacity for resistance can survive. A high infant mortality rate on the one hand and a high proportion of aged people on the other are the chief signs of a time which shows little regard for individual life. Since, under such conditions, all weaklings are swept away through acute distress and illness, and only the healthiest remain alive, a kind of natural selection takes place. Thus the number of a Folk can easily be subject to a limitation, but the inner value can remain, indeed it can experience an inner heightening.
But such a process cannot last for too long, otherwise the distress can also turn into its opposite. In nations composed of racial elements that are not wholly of equal value, permanent malnutrition can ultimately lead to a dull surrender to the distress, which gradually reduces energy, and instead of a struggle which fosters a natural selection, a gradual degeneration sets in. This is surely the case once man, in order to control the chronic distress, no longer attaches any value to an increase of his number, and resorts on his own to birth control. For then he himself immediately embarks upon a road opposite to that taken by nature. Whereas nature, out of the multitude of beings who are born, spares the few who are most fitted in terms of health and resistance to wage life’s struggle, man limits the number of births, and then tries to keep alive those who have been born with no regard to their real value or to their inner worth. Here his humanity is only the handmaiden of his weakness, and at the same time it is actually the cruellest destroyer of his existence. If man wants to limit the number of births on his own, without producing the terrible consequences which arise from birth control, he must give the number of births free rein but cut down on the number of those remaining alive. At one time the Spartans were capable of such a wise measure, but not our present, mendaciously sentimental, bourgeois patriotic nonsense.
The rule of six thousand Spartans over three hundred and fifty thousand Helots was only thinkable in consequence of the high racial value of the Spartans. But this was the result of a systematic race preservation; thus Sparta must be regarded as the first Folkish State. The exposure of sick, weak, deformed children, in short their destruction, was more decent and in truth a thousand times more humane than the wretched insanity of our day which preserves the most pathological subject, and indeed at any price, and yet takes the life of a hundred thousand healthy children in consequence of birth control or through abortions, in order subsequently to breed a race of degenerates burdened with illnesses.
Hence it can be said in general that the limitation of the population through distress and human agencies may very well lead to an approximate adaptation to the inadequate living space, but the value of the existing human material is constantly lowered and indeed ultimately decays.
The second attempt to adapt the population size to the soil lies in emigration, which so long as it does not take place tribally, likewise leads to a devaluation of the remaining human material.
Human birth control wipes out the bearer of the highest values, emigration destroys the value of the average.
There are still two other ways by which a nation can try to balance the disproportion between population and territory. The first is called increasing the domestic productivity of the soil, which as such has nothing to do with so called internal colonisation; the second the increase of commodity production and the conversion of the domestic economy into an export economy.
The idea of increasing the yield of the soil within borders that have been fixed once and forever is an old one.
The history of human cultivation of the soil is one of permanent progress, permanent improvement and therefore of increasing yields. While the first part of this progress lay in the field of methods of soil cultivation as well as in the construction of settlements, the second part lies in increasing the value of the soil artificially through the introduction of nutritious matter that is lacking or insufficient. This line leads from the hoe of former times up to the modern steam plough, from stable manure up to present artificial fertilisers. Without doubt the productivity of the soil has thereby been infinitely increased. But it is just as certain that there is a limit somewhere. Especially if we consider that the living standard of cultured man is a general one, which is not determined by the amount of a nation’s commodities available to the individual; rather it is just as much subject to the judgement of surrounding
