If a nation has the ability to produce great minds a thousand times over, but has no appreciation for the value of these minds and excludes them from its political life, these great men are of no use. It can therefore collapse, in the best case perhaps passing on its inventions and ideas to the minds of other nations, teaching these nations, but no longer is it a nation called to lead itself. The third value hidden within a nation is the drive to self assertion. A people that has lost this has almost given up its place in the world, in which each living creature owes its existence only to the eternal striving to rise higher. If a nation today proclaims the theory that it will find happiness in lasting peace, and attempts to live according to that theory, it will one day inevitably succumb to this most basic form of cowardice.
Pacifism is the clearest form of cowardice, possessing no willingness to fight for anything at all.
The same person today who preaches limiting the number of children to the nation murders others so that he himself may live. He therefore eliminates the second form of intrinsic strength, namely the possibility of producing more minds at all. A people that limits the number of its children cannot demand of fate that it give it great minds from the few children who are born. More likely, such a people will hatch the most unworthy offspring and will attempt to preserve them at any price. Such a nation has first born, but no longer any great men.