146 PRESIDENT S ADDRESS. — SECTION E. 



Cartography, Climatologv, and Geomorphology — planks in the 

 geographical platform — need to be studied in every military 

 academy. Map knowledge is absolutely essential to military 

 interests. 



'Not only is geography helpful to the higher command, but it 

 enters directly into the routine o<f all army operations. 



As illustrating the value of geographical knowledge to military 

 operations, Sir Thomas Holditch, in a Presidential address* to the 

 Royal Geographical Society, has said: "Before the war ended, 

 what was originally a small detachment of special surveyors who 

 were placed in the field for the purpose of rectifying existing maps 

 of the gradually extending theatre of military operations on the 

 Western Front, and of furnishing the military staff, especially the 

 artillery, with the precise and accurate data which we're all-im- 

 portant in regulating the combined movements of troops and of 

 fulfilling the difficult design of range -finding for the guns, had 

 expanded into a highly-organized department niimbering some 

 4,200 employees. . . . "Our brilliant artillery service which 

 carried us through the worst phases of the war was very largely 

 indebted to the geographical section of the War Department for 

 its magnificent success. . . . Never probably again will an 

 important campaign be conducted without a properly-constituted 

 geographical section . " 



It is not too much to say that many of the failures during the 

 war would not have happened had our commands been more hiWy 

 furnished with geographical knowledge. 



Then again, in making settlements at the Peace Conference, 

 how very essential is an intimate knowledge of the peoples, and of 

 the physical features of the countries in question for a sure basis 

 of boundary settlements. A peaceful and lasting settlement can 

 be arrived at, only in proportion as the fundamental principles of 

 human geography are understood and acted upon without bias. 



The war period temporarily put a brake upon geographical ex- 

 ploration and curtailed the study ol geography at the Universi- 

 ties. Nevertheless, in another way, it gave the science a stimulus 

 which must lead to far-reaching advantage. It has been a period 

 for the application of geography. Maps were in everybody's 

 hands, from the general's in the field to the civilian's at home." 



War gives an impetus to map-making, and one great permanent 

 result that we now have out of this period is the map of Europe 

 and south-west Asia on a uniform scale of 1 : 1,000,000. 



The scheine to compile' a map of the world uniformly collated 

 on a scale of 1/M was fin-t definitely decided upon in the vear 

 1909 at the London meeting of the International Map Committee, 

 but only half a dozen sheets had been prepared in the three and a 



* Jour. Geog. Soc, 1919. 



