CONTRIBUTIONS OF GEOGRAPHY 181 



Society also issued a series of wall maps showing " Historical 

 Boundaries in Europe/' using grouped sheets of the 1 : 1,000,000 

 map as a base, and showing successive boundaries in different 

 cplors. These boundaries were drawn with great care, on the 

 basis of extended research, and represented a valuable contribu- 

 tion to the work of preparing for the peace discussions. These 

 are not all, but merely important examples of the activities of 

 the Royal Geographical Society in the service of its country. 



If one left London and crossed the Channel to the British 

 front in France, seeking evidence that the science of geography 

 was doing its share in war work, he was not disappointed. 

 From the general headquarters of the British Expeditionary 

 Force, down through the separate Army Corps and lesser 

 headquarters, to the most humble artillery observation post, 

 he found everywhere overwhelming testimony that an army 

 fights on its maps, just as truly as on its stomach. Maps of 

 many types, of many scales, in many colors, showing every 

 variety of information and used for every conceivable purpose, 

 tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of maps such was 

 the contribution of the topographer and cartographer to the 

 winning of the war. Not least among the serious consequences 

 of a big German advance was the fact that it pushed the Allied 

 armies off of areas accurately mapped on large scales, and into 

 back areas where only smaller scales and less accurate maps 

 were available. This not only imposed on the engineers and 

 the geographical sections of the staffs a heavy burden of work 

 at a critical time, but made less effective artillery fire on the 

 German back areas, since the enemy also had moved into regions 

 for which the Allies possessed no accurate large-scale maps. 

 In many' cases maps carried information of such high value 

 that it was forbidden to take them into the front-line trenches, 

 lest an unexpected enemy raid should give them into the pos- 

 session of the Germans ; and the capture of similar maps from 

 the Germans was always a happy event. 



To supplement the representation of the earth's surface by 

 maps, and to render more realistic the forms of the hills and 



