Demographer's Deduction

Demographer Frank W. Notestein drew lines last week to support a mighty deduction: Germany will never again be able to challenge the world; a steady decline in her population will forbid it. The head of Princeton's Office of Population Research put his careful and complex projections in 300 pages of charts, curves and tables called The Future Population of Europe and the Soviet Union (Columbia University Press; $2.75). Then, in Foreign Affairs for April, he drew some conclusions for the layman.

Reich Down. Wrote Notestein: "Germany, like her western neighbors, has passed the period in which she could become a dominant world power. [This is due] to the diffusion of technological civilization among peoples that are growing more rapidly. Those who view the prevention of a new German attempt at conquest as the major problem of the peace seem ... to be looking backward. . . . The power and interests of the Soviet Union are an adequate guarantee against that contingency."

But Germany will be neither powerless nor unimportant. Says Dr. Notestein: "Germans will continue to form the largest ethnic group west of the Slavs. On their continued productive efficiency will depend much of the economic welfare of Europe. It [must] be maintained. Otherwise, a train of poverty and disillusionment, spreading throughout the Continent, might soon bring a new political upheaval."

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