This is an unhealthy relation. It is impossible to feed our Folk on this basis and under this premise. Indeed it would only create confusion to set the slogan of internal colonisation before the masses, who will then latch their hopes onto it and thereby think to have found a means of doing away with their present distress. This would not at all be the case. For the distress is not the result of a wrong kind of land distribution, say, but the consequence of the inadequate amount of space, on the whole, at the disposal of our nation today.

By increasing the productivity of the soil, however, some alleviation of a Folk’s lot could be achieved. But in the long run this would never exempt it from the duty to adapt the nation’s living space, become insufficient, to the increased population. Through internal colonisation, in the most favourable circumstances, only amelioration in the sense of social reform and justice could take place. It is entirely without importance as regards the total sustenance of a Folk. It will often be harmful for a nation’s foreign policy position because it awakens hopes which can remove a Folk from realistic thinking. The ordinary, respectable citizen will then really believe that he can find his daily bread at home through industry and hard work, rather than realise that the strength of a Folk must be concentrated in order to win new living space.

Economics, which especially today is regarded by many as the saviour from distress and care, hunger and misery, under certain preconditions can give a Folk possibilities for existence which lie outside its relation to its own soil. But this is linked to a number of prerequisites of which I must make brief mention here.

The sense of such an economic system lies in the fact that a nation produces more of certain vital commodities than it requires for its own use. It sells this surplus outside its own national community, and with the proceeds therefrom it procures those foodstuffs and also the raw materials which it lacks.