190 THE NEW WORLD OF SCIENCE 



and discussed at length the geographical problems confronting 

 Italy's armies, and the geographical problems which would con- 

 front her statesmen when the time should come to delimit Italy's 

 new frontiers. As an instructor of army officers Colonel De 

 Ambrosis gives courses on geology and geography, and re- 

 quires field excursions in order to insure a practical under- 

 standing of the value of these subjects to the military man. 



On the Balkan front, where facilities were certainly very 

 inferior as compared with those to be found in England, 

 France, and Italy, one nevertheless found that map-making 

 establishments, relief model laboratories, and other geograph- 

 ical equipment were among the things considered indispensable. 

 The lack of good maps for the Balkans imposed upon the en- 

 gineers, geographers and cartographers an unusually heavy 

 burden, particularly as the enemy's territory had to be mapped 

 in large part by means of airplane observations. 



The fact that America entered the war very late, and de- 

 pended upon her allies, particularly France, for much of her 

 needed geographical material, makes impossible any compari- 

 son between geographical work in the American and Allied 

 armies. We may, however, note some of the ways in which 

 geographical science contributed to America's share in the war. 

 Our leading geographer, William Morris Davis, prepared for 

 the use of our army officers, with the approval of the Geography 

 Committee of the National Research Council, a " Handbook 

 of Northern France " which had a wide distribution, and later 

 undertook a similar work on Western Germany. The Division 

 of Geology and Geography of the Council issued for army use 

 a special edition of that part of the present writer's 

 11 Topography and Strategy in the War " which dealt with 

 the western front. 



To assist in the work of the Student Army Training Corps, 

 the Division of Geology and Geography prepared and issued 

 under the editorship of Herbert E. Gregory, a " Textbook on 

 Military Geology and Topography," an " Introductory Meteor- 

 ology," and a " Syllabus on the Geography of Europe." The 



