Indeed, the losses which arise directly from a war are in no way proportionate to the losses deriving from a Folk’s bad and unhealthy life as such. Silent hunger and evil vices in ten years kill more people than war could finish off in a thousand years. The cruellest war, however, is precisely the one which appears to be most peaceful to presentday humanity, namely the peaceful economic war. In its ultimate consequences, this very war leads to sacrifices in contrast to which even those of the World War shrink to nothing. For this war affects not only the living but grips above all those who are about to be born. Whereas war at most kills off a fragment of the present, economic warfare murders the future. A single year of birth control in Europe kills more people than all those who fell in battle, from the time of the French Revolution up to our day, in all the wars of Europe, including the World War. But this is the consequence of a peaceful economic policy which has overpopulated Europe without preserving the possibility of a further healthy development for a number of nations.

In general, the following should also be stated:

As soon as a Folk forgets that the task of politics is to preserve its life with all means and according to all possibilities, and instead aims to subject politics to a definite mode of action, it destroys the inner meaning of the art of leading a Folk in its fateful struggle for freedom and bread.

A policy which is fundamentally bellicose can keep a Folk removed from numerous vices and pathological symptoms, but it cannot prevent a change of the inner values in the course of many centuries.