Tectonic processes now in action

Tectonic processes may act either gradually as in connection with plastic flow, or as sudden movements connected with earthquakes. The first sort of movements requires that in a layer the stresses are larger than the strength of the material in opposing plastic or pseudo-plastic flow; the second that somewhere they surpass the breaking strength. In three papers [see 1, 2, 3 of "References" at end of paper], one of them jointly with Dr. Richter, the author recently has investigated such processes. In the present paper, it is intended to give a summary and to draw certain conclusions.