Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1941, Side 122

ECONOMIC ADAPTATION
By Arnold Fraenkel,
former Member of the Danish Parliament.
IN my article entitled “The Balance of World Economy,”
published in the preceding issue of this journal, the conclusions
were based solely on facts. We sketched the economic devel-
opment as it has actually grown out of the past, and as it has
led to a balance of world economy which is unfavourable to
Europe. It is irrelevant in this connection whether we like this
balance sheet or not, whether it is offensive to accepted or tradi-
tional economic conceptions, or is contrary to political views,
national or even religious sentiment. It is facts we have worked
on, indeed the most powerful of all facts, which no living being
from the primitive amoeba of a billion years ago to present day
man can escape from: the work for food. — “Die Suche nach der
Nahrung ist die causa movens des Weltalls,” as a German
economist once expressed it, is, however, only the whole truth
insofar as food with all living beings is the condition of the
maintenance of life, and hence of what may develop out of life
in the course of the millions of years.
The conclusion of our balance of world economy was: the
£2.000.000.000 for which Europe could deliver goods to overseas
countries before 1914, can no longer be drawn from that source;
our enormous reserve in the supplying of the 1180 million people
of Asia, as they rise above starvation level, is declining and will
be lost up to the point indicated in “The Balance of World
Economy.” This is certain. Here is no task for us any more than
for other states. The task lies only in the adaptation, to which
we shall now turn, as far as our own small country is concerned,
by dealing with a few of the most important problems set by
the new era.
The most important of all is unemployment, because it finds
a direct expression in terms of living men. It undermines or
crushes human destiny, and when it reaches a certain volume it
becomes a direct and indirect menace to the society which it
haunts. So much has been spoken and written of unemployment
that it would be a waste of space to define its characteristics. We
know them all. We are beginning in a modest way to appreciate
its dangers, as proved by the growing energy with which both