ABSTRACT
The problem of peace is vitally related to the question of population. The population problem in its relation to peace has two fundamental aspects — those of quantity and quality. How many people ? And what kind of people ? Wars through the ages and particularly in our own time can be explained largely in terms of these two aspects of population. It is true that the causes of war are manifold and sometimes obscure. But whatever may be the direct and immediate causes precipitating nations into war, the basic or ultimate causes are the conditions under which people live and work. These conditions, which constitute the standard of living of a people, arise from international differentials in land area including resources and population numbers. When population increases in any limited area, the quest for new land begins. Land hunger leads to war. The cause may not always be as simple and direct as it was in the case of German demand for lebensraum or Japan's desire for emigration outlets. Sometimes the cause takes the form of a struggle for markets, a quest for raw materials or a search for avenues of international trade. No matter what the disguised form, the element of population pressure does enter into war. So long as the problem of making a living constitutes man's major task, and so long as earning a living depends ultimately on land, the area of useful land and its resources available to any nation will constitute the crux of our international relations. Since the area of the world's land, barring the conquest of the moon and other planets apart from ours, is limited, there are only two ways by which any nation can increase the land at its disposal. One is to 234appropriate land hitherto unoccupied by any human group, and the other is to take land away from someone else. Even the colonization (or really early conquest) of the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand comes under the second category. The modern quest for land or the variables of its economic equivalent can only mean one thing—war. Though the relation between over-population and war may appear controversial and may not be obvious, it has now been more or less conceded that population pressure or its material and psychological consequences has been an important factor in almost all international tensions and wars.
