Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1941, Blaðsíða 12

6
LE NORD
by nature, that large areas of Asia — India, China and Japan —
are among the most densely populated in the world, and that the
millions of Asia are not intellectually inferior to the Europeans.
But the fact remains that the density of population is far greater
in Europe than in Asia, about 47 persons per square kilometre
in Europe compared with only 28 in Asia.
If we compare Europe with the entire inhabited world the
proportion looks still more extraordinary, for the area of Europe
is about Vi3 of the inhabited world, but this thirteenth part is
the home of more than a quarter of the population of the world.
This extends the comparison to its ultimate limit, the inhabited
surface of the earth. If we now examine the question of the
population of Europe within its narrowest limitation, Europe
itself, there is little comfort to derive. For if we separate the
parts of Europe whose density of population is 50 persons per
square kilometre or more, we get a belt stretching from the
southern part of Scandinavia through central Europe and south-
ward. This belt includes nearly a third of the area of Europe
but about two thirds of the population1). This belt also covers
Denmark with her 87 persons per square kilometre, but there
are countries within it whose density of population is far greater.
In September 1938 the German Reich had a density of 135 per
square kilometre, the Netherlands have 247, Great Britain and
Northern Ireland 196 and Belgium as much as 274; Italy, the
other axis power, keeps good pace with 141, and so forth.
In other words: Whether we regard the “continent” of Europe
in relation to the entire inhabited world or in relation to Asia,
of which it forms the waterfront, or if we look at the density
of population within Europe itself, we are justified in concluding
from the actual figures that the crowding of large numbers into
a small area, which is characteristic of Europe, must require quite
special economic conditions if it is not to be described as unsound
overcrowding.
And if we leave the figures and ask what people live on in
Europe and Asia, and how they live, we are confronted with
facts containing riddles which developments to-day require to
be solved, i. e. they are practical problems, economic and po-
litical problems, indeed cultural problems from which mankind
can no longer escape.
x) Vahl & Hatt, 1. c. p. 23.