CONTRIBUTIONS OF GEOGRAPHY 183 



French soldier is just emerging from the unpretentious archway 

 of No. 140. You note that the camion is filled with great 

 bundles of what may be maps, so you enter the archway and 

 find yourself in an open court, surrounded by a series of low 

 buildings, some of them mere temporary structures. This is 

 the headquarters of the Service Geographique de TAnnee. In 

 a small office at the head of a dark stairway you would have 

 found all through the anxious months when the decision of 

 arms hung in the balance, the distinguished figure of the chief 

 of the service, General Bourgeois. Under his efficient direction 

 the science of geography was standing behind the blue-coated 

 man behind the gun. 



Had you inquired into the organization of the Service you 

 would have discovered that it included a section of Geodesy 

 (in which little or no geodetic work was then being done), 

 and an affiliated section which directed the highly important 

 work of determining the precise geographic location of enemy 

 guns by triangulating, with special instruments, for the position 

 of their flashes and for the points of origin of the sound of 

 their explosions. Another section was charged with topo- 

 graphic surveying along the front, for in the midst of the war 

 new maps, including one series on the large scale of nearly 

 6 inches to the mile, were being prepared for portions of the 

 front. The general impression that no detailed mapping for 

 military purposes would be necessary in a country so well 

 mapped as France, is not correct. Although a part of the 

 front had been mapped on a scale of 1 150,000 before the war, 

 and contour maps on a scale of 1 120,000 had since been made 

 for the whole front partly on the basis of new surveys and 

 partly by enlarging and adapting smaller scale maps of earlier 

 date, the German advances forced the line back into territory 

 for which the best topographic data available was that used in 

 preparing the old i :8o,ooo tat Major hachure sheets. When 

 these were enlarged to the i :5o,ooo and 1 120,000 scale, and 

 printed with a grille for control of artillery fire, it was found 

 that they were so inaccurate as materially to impair the effec- 



