I04 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



for all. The development of science and the multiplication of contacts 

 have made thought more complex. Social forms result from interaction 

 between men and their environments, and the lessons learned and the 

 ideas selected and developed in different cases have been very different. 

 This is a legitimate and important sphere of work for the student of 

 geography. In each case, the people and their form of society are so much 

 a part each of the other that, whatever changes mass-production may 

 bring, they want to, they must in fact, keep a large measure of continuity 

 from their past. They have nearly all once been, in the main, self- 

 contained groups, or, at least, external commerce has been subordinate to 

 internal exchange. Socially and economically the village group was in 

 large measure an autarchy, whatever political organisations might come 

 and go above its head. One recalls the well-known answer of a Polish 

 villager that his lord was a Pole but he was a peasant. The idea of the 

 self-contained unit is thus very deep-rooted. With great effort, using the 

 opportunities of cheaper printing in the nineteenth century, the village 

 has come to feel itself part of the nation, which has clamoured for opportu- 

 nities of self-expression. Many a nation naturally, therefore, seeks to be 

 self-contained, all the more if it feels that specialisation and consequent 

 dependence on imports is going to give it an inferior position. We may 

 declaim against the follies of economic nationalism ; we must, however, 

 go beyond criticism into sympathetic examination of the people in their 

 geographical environment with their need of ' a place in the sun ' and 

 their claim upon the world's help, if we are to become constructive 

 thinkers. 



The old self-contained national group might have a centralised adminis- 

 tration efficiently organised for defence ; but it was usually an agricultural 

 group and, in the nineteenth century, found itself at a disadvantage in 

 comparison with a group of industrial producers in commercial organisa- 

 tion. In the first burst of mass-production the future for manufacturer 

 and merchant seemed boundless. The exchanges that developed, unless 

 there were some restriction, tended at first to make profits and credits 

 accumulate among the industrialists rather than among the agriculturists. 

 These credits might be loaned to the agricultural countries to start them 

 on the new line of development or to build railways and roads, and the 

 debtor country might, and in some cases does, profit by its indebtedness. 

 But industrial groups, to keep their works going, have not seldom been 

 willing to get payment in bonds, or banks in creditor countries have issued 

 bonds the produce of which has been used to pay for goods sent to debtor 

 countries when cash and exports did not suffice. There has often been 

 an eagerness to put off the day of reckoning in this way because direct 

 payment would depreciate the debtors' currency. Moreover, in far too 

 many cases, an evil chain of consequences works itself out. Part of the 

 loan spills over into unauthorised channels on its way to its destination ; 

 much is probably spent on railways that may not earn a cent for a century ; 

 not a little may go in various schemes of display to try to conquer what is 

 now called an inferiority complex. It is true that default is not infrequent, 

 and, in this way, international debts that are not represented by sub- 

 stantial assets do wipe themselves out in time ; but the process is harmful 



