XI 



CONTRIBUTIONS OF GEOGRAPHY 

 DOUGLAS W. JOHNSON 



ONE evening during the war there gathered at the Cercle 

 Interallie in Paris a group of six or eight British, French, 

 and American geographers and geologists, to compare notes 

 and profit by the sharing of experiences. One had just come 

 to Paris from British General Headquarters to search libraries 

 and university laboratories for material needed in his work of 

 supplying to the British armies information about the surface 

 features of Northern France. Two were engaged as geo- 

 graphical experts on the French Comite d'fitudes, an organiza- 

 tion charged with assembling scientific data which would be 

 needed by the French representatives at the coming Peace Con- 

 ference. Another was a member of the " Inquiry," a similar 

 organization created in America by Colonel House at the 

 direction of the President, and was at that time in Paris on duty 

 for the " Inquiry " and as foreign representative of the Division 

 of Geology and Geography of the National Research Council. 

 Three were members of the Commission de Geographic, a 

 branch of the Service Geographique of the French Army, 

 occupied with the task of supplying the fighting forces of 

 France with detailed geographical information about every 

 region where those forces might be called upon to operate. 

 One had assisted in training future officers of the American 

 Army in geographical methods, and was now at the head of a 

 war work bureau in France. It is a significant fact that the 

 hazards of war could throw together in one place such a group 

 of men, each of whom had been actively engaged in placing 



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