PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 543 
one of our sederunts. Perhaps I may be permitted to express the hope that we 
shall concern ourselves with the types of region we want, their structure or 
‘grain,’ and their relative positions, rather than with the precise delimitation 
of their boundaries, to which I think we have sometimes been inclined, for 
educational purposes, to give a little too much attention. 
Before leaving this I should like to add, speaking still in terms of ‘east- 
and-west ’ and ‘north-and-south,’ one word more about the essential east-and- 
west structure of the Old World. I have already referred to the great central 
axis of Asia. This axis is prolonged westward through Europe, but it is cut 
through and broken to such an extent that we may include the Mediterranean 
region with the area lying further north, to which indeed it geographically 
belongs in any discussion of this sort. But the Mediterranean region is bounded 
on the other side by the Sahara, and none of our modern inventions facilitating 
transport has made any impression upon the dry desert; nor does it seem likely 
that such a desert will ever become a less formidable barrier than a great moun- 
tain mass or range. We may conclude, then, that in so far as the Old World is 
concerned the ‘ north-and-south’ transport can never be carried on as freely as 
it may in the New, but only through certain weak points, or ‘ round the ends,’ 
z.e. by sea. It may be further pointed out that the land areas in the southern 
hemisphere are so narrow that they will scarcely enter into the ‘ east-and-west’ 
category at all—the transcontinental railway as understood in the northern 
hemisphere cannot exist; it is scarcely a pioneer system, but rather comes inte 
existence as a later by-product of local east-and-west lines, as in Africa. 
These geographical facts must exercise a profound influence upon the future 
of the British Isles. Trade south of the great dividing line must always be to 
a large extent of the ‘north-and-south’ type, and the British Isles stand prac- 
tically at the western end of the great natural barrier. From their position the 
British Isles will always be a centre of immense importance in entrepét trade, 
importing commodities from ‘south’ and distributing ‘east and west,’ and 
similarly in the reverse direction. This movement will be permanent, and will 
increase in volume long after the present type of purely ‘east-and-west’ trade 
has become relatively less important than it is now, and long after the British 
Isles have ceased to have any of the special advantages for manufacturing 
industries which are due to their own resources either in the way of energy or of 
raw material. We can well imagine, however, that this permanent advantage of 
position will react favourably, if indirectly, upon certain types of our manu- 
factures, at least for a very long time to come. 
Reverting briefly to the equalisation of the distribution of population in the 
wheat-producing areas and the causes which are now at work in this direction, it 
is interesting to inquire how geographical conditions are likely to influence this 
on the smaller scale. We may suppose that the production of staple foodstuffs 
must always be more uniformly distributed than the manufacture of raw 
materials, or the production of the raw materials themselves, for the most 
important raw materials of vegetable origin (as cotton, rubber, &c.) demand 
special climatic conditions, and, apart from the distribution of energy, manu- 
facturing industries are strongly influenced by the distribution of mineral 
deposits, providing metals for machinery, and so on. It may, however, be re- 
marked that the useful metals, such as iron, are widely distributed in or near 
regions which are not as a rule unfavourable to agriculture. Nevertheless, the 
fact remains that while a more uniform distribution is necessary and inevitable 
in the case of agriculture, many of the conditions of industrial and social 
life are in favour of concentration; the electrical transmission of energy 
removes, in whole or in part, only one or two of the centripetal forces. The 
general result might be an approximation to the conditions occurring in many 
parts of the monsoon areas—a number of fairly large towns pretty evenly dis- 
tributed over a given agricultural area, and each drawing its main food supplies 
from the region surrounding it. The positions of such towns would be deter- 
mined much more by industrial conditions, and less by military conditions, 
than in the past (military power being in these days mobile, and not fixed) ; 
but the result would on a larger scale be of the same type as was developed 
in the central counties of England, which, as Mackinder has pointed out, are 
of almost equal size and take the name of the county town. Concentration 
within the towns would, of course, be less severe than in the early days of 
