Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1941, Side 26

20
LE NORD
British India is similarly developing in the direction of in-
dustrialisation, and Russia’s march eastwards is continued from
the Tzarist period. Soviet Russia is continually pushing the
centre of gravity of its economic life towards the East, a move-
ment which is methodically intensified. The iron manufacturing
town of Magnetogorsk in Southern Ural, which has only recently
developed, numbered 172000 inhabitants in 1934, Stalinsk had
only 4000 inhabitants in 1926, but 208000 in 1934. These cities
form the basis of an engineering industry which is to be applied
to the industrialisation of more easterly districts. One of the ef-
fects of the progressive industrialisation of Northern Asia is the
growth of the towns. The number of inhabitants in Irkutsk rose
from 90000 in 1926 to 154000 in 1934. In the same period
Khabarovsk rose from 44000 to 104000, and Vladivostok from
101000 to 202000. Communications are correspondingly devel-
oped with great energy. These data are taken from Gudmund
Hatt’s excellent paper on pacific problems, see above, p. 56.
However sketchy this account may have been, the facts
quoted will make it clear that the economic life of Asia is devel-
oping in the direction of industrialisation, and that this develop-
ment proceeds with the irresistibility of a natural force as a re-
sult of the numerical strength and intellectual quality of the
population, supported by the natural resources of the territory.
Similarly it will be realised that this means an increasing decline
of what we have called the reserve of European production. We
have also seen that in an endeavour to explain the present life
and death struggle between great European powers decisive
opinion in Europe sum up the entire position as it were in one
pregnant maxim, the contents of which is precisely what we have
endeavoured to substantiate by irrefutable facts. One recalls the
words: “to export or die”.
This, therefore, is the conclusion, concentrated in a propa-
gandist formula. The reasons have been given above, but we
have not yet said: die. Even when gigantic forces such as those
which we have accounted for are in motion there are ways and
means, not, however, to combat them for it is forces of nature
we are faced with; a natural development embracing 1180 mil-
lion people who are just as intelligent as the people of the West;
neither to escape from them, for no advance is possible along
the old tracks. It would only be a waste of time to try to solve
vital question such as European unemployment by an intensified