216 THE NEW WORLD OF SCIENCE 



sometimes well organized, sometimes sporadic and less suffi- 

 cient, was being rendered through numberless channels. The 

 whole story of geology's contribution to the waging of the world 

 war will never be written; but enough is known to give us a 

 realization of the fact that it was, in the aggregate, literally 

 a monumental service. 



Geology played no such role at the Peace Conference as did 

 its sister science of Geography. In the very nature of the 

 case the territorial settlements were primarily geographical 

 problems, whereas geology merely entered into that and other 

 groups of questions as one of many elements. Perhaps it fig- 

 ured most largely in the economic problems of the conference, 

 including the problem of reparations. 



Long before the Armistice geologists in different countries 

 were engaged in collecting the data of their science which 

 would be needed when the representatives of the Powers 

 gathered about the green table. The French Government 

 appointed two of its noted geologists, Emmanuel de Margerie 

 and Lucien Cayeux, and a military officer with a geological 

 training, to examine and report on the mineral wealth of the 

 regions adjacent to the northeastern frontier of France, includ- 

 ing the mining regions of Alsace-Lorraine which it was deter- 

 mined should be reunited to the mother-country. In London, 

 Washington, and other capitals individual ^ geologists and 

 government geological bureaus were cooperating in assembling 

 material and preparing reports and maps on a wide variety of 

 questions. The American " Inquiry," the French " Comite 

 d'fitudes," and other bodies specially constituted to provide the 

 diplomats of their respective countries with information on the 

 peace settlement, included geologists on their staffs or secured 

 the cooperation of geologists in their work. When the Confer- 

 ence assembled at Paris, geologists, while less numerous than 

 the geographers, were present; some of them throughout the 

 long months of the negotiations, some for a few weeks only, 

 when called upon to aid in the solution of some particular 

 problem. Whether it was the Saar Coal Basin, the Teschen 



