12 NUT GROWING 



"Every nation can and ought to colonize for the 

 sake of its own expansion and, all of the territory of 

 Europe being occupied, we must attempt to get pos- 

 session of colonies in foreign countries," said Nico- 

 lai. 



Is all of the territory in Europe occupied? By 

 no means. Occupation in this sense relates simply 

 to methods of living up to the present time. The 

 land cannot fairly be said to be occupied in Europe 

 when wolves are still a pest in the forests of France 

 and when almost every acre traversed by these 

 wolves would produce hundreds of pounds of nut 

 products for man and his domesticated animals 

 every year. 



It is said that a machinery victory is the only pos- 

 sible victory over the land in these days when there 

 is increasing tendency for men to leave the land and 

 go to the cities, but the tree is a machine. So is the 

 annual plant a machine for that matter, but the tree 

 is a machine that is working day and night with less 

 attention required from man than the annual plant 

 requires. The struggle for existence is basically a 

 struggle for sustenance. All commercial life de- 

 pends upon plants because plants alone are capable 

 of extracting potential energy from the earth. The 

 cause for war is fundamentally acquisition of prop- 

 erty, but if property may be acquired through war- 

 fare upon nature it is more desirable than warfare 

 by man upon man. The latter has often been called 

 a business, but from my point of view it is a sport 

 of rulers and one which is destructive in all of its 



