CONTRIBUTIONS OF GEOGRAPHY 179 



collections were in large part removed, temporary walls and 

 doors were erected, and a great staff of workers was soon turn- 

 ing out large volumes of geographical material for use by the 

 British Army and Navy. Here the visitor found one gallery 

 filled with long tables, each table devoted to a particular region 

 such as Hungary, Belgium, or Serbia, filled with appropriate 

 books and maps, and presided over by a specialist assigned to 

 prepare a monograph on that region. A number of assistants, 

 most of them men and some of them army officers, served under 

 each specialist. In another gallery a corps of translators, 

 mostly women, were at work translating and abstracting such 

 foreign reports as the specialists and their assistants might 

 desire. Two other rooms were equipped with drawing tables, 

 and here, perhaps, a dozen or so draughtsmen and cartographers 

 were busy making maps. One or two rooms were devoted to 

 the meteorological staff, which assembled data and prepared 

 maps and charts for this branch of the service. It was an 

 impressive sight to witness this great body of scientific workers 

 busy at the task of collecting geographical data for the use of 

 Britain's fighting forces. 



Many of the reports prepared by this geographical staff 

 were of a highly confidential character; but it is permissible to 

 state that the documents issued included a series of " Hand- 

 books " describing the climate, topography, economic resources, 

 transportation routes, and political geography of the many 

 regions in which the British soldier might be called to fight in 

 a world war; more elaborate "Manuals" of certain regions 

 or problems of special significance, accompanied by Atlases of 

 detailed maps portraying the topography, geology, rainfall, 

 economic products, railways and other lines of communications, 

 distribution of races and languages, and other geographical data 

 which might be useful in very detailed studies; new maps of 

 regions for which satisfactory cartographic material had not 

 previously been published, and special maps and reports to 

 elucidate a variety of problems for the solution of which differ- 

 ent departments of the Government asked geographical 



