128 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
and a few small settlements in Africa and Asia were occupied by the 
Whites. During the last century, and especially since the dévelopment 
of railway and steam navigation after 1840, the whole of America, all 
Africa except Abyssinia and Liberia, all Australia, and all Asia, with the 
exception of China, Japan, and Siam, have fallen under the control of 
European people. Since 1900 European influence has, however, suffered 
extensive reductions in Asia and Africa, which have advertised the relative 
decrease in the number of white people. During the past half-century the 
unprecedented increase in the white race has been exceeded by that of the 
coloured people. Increased disparity in numbers means, in a democratic 
age, an inevitable transfer of power ; while the former prestige of the white 
man has been undermined by his own beneficent rule. Alike in war and 
peace the personal authority which the white man held in 1900 has under- 
gone a momentous decline. 
III. Geographical Principles. 
Whether that movement is a temporary set-back or a permanent 
change in inter-racial relations is a problem on which Geography should 
afford the most reliable available guidance. If we accept the scope of 
Geography as the study of the earth with especial relation to man, its 
primary duty is to collate the results of other sciences which throw light 
on the major problems of human development. It should learn from 
physiology the effects of climate, altitude, and tropical sunshine on the 
different races of mankind ; from biology what diseases are due to para- 
sites and how infection may be prevented ; it should find from agriculture 
the most profitable local crops and how to improve the food supply; it should 
discover from geology the nature and distribution of soils and the available 
supplies of minerals and mineral fuels ; and it should seek from the ethno- 
logist guidance as to the characteristics of the races who are competing 
in the struggle for existence. The geographer provided with this knowledge 
should endeavour to weigh evenly, free from race prejudice and political 
bias, and undisturbed by the fears of vested interests, the factors which 
control the distribution of mankind. 
The ruling geographical principles as to the distribution of the three 
primary races may be summarized as follows: 1. The population must 
be scanty in the colder regions of the world owing to their long severe 
winter, and also in the dry deserts, except in those relatively small areas 
that can be watered by irrigation. 2. The tropical regions have hitherto 
been the home of the coloured races, while the white nations have been 
mainly restricted to the temperate zone. 3. When different races live 
side by side, the more primitive race, unless conditions be imposed on it 
fatal to its spirit, will outlive the other wherever the struggle for existence 
is keen. 
From these principles two main inferences can be drawn. First, 
the frigid zones, the chief deserts, and the tropical plateaus above 12,000 ft. 
or so above sea level will always have a sparse population, and will long 
be left except for occasional commercial, mining, and industrial centres, 
to the most primitive tribes who have access to them, such as the Eskimo 
in North America, the Lapps in Europe, and various hardy, easily contented 
Mongols in Central Asia. Second, white colonists have no chance of per- 
