E.— GEOGRAPHY, 101 



connected with the inter-regional relations of differently organised groups 

 in Africa and elsewhere have been greatly complicated by the impact of 

 industrial Europe on their lives. Franz Schrader in that very illuminating 

 sketch The Foundations of Geography in the Twentieth Century, which 

 formed the subject of the first Herbertson Memorial lecture, rightly empha- 

 sised the profound disturbance of equilibrium with environment which 

 the rapid transformation of man's relations to nature, through the achieve- 

 ments of applied science, has inevitably produced. It has particularly 

 affected the traditional societies of intertropical Africa, the Monsoon Lands 

 and the South Sea Islands whose mode of life and social organisation, once 

 established as an adjustment to their milieu, often remained in essentials 

 unchanged until they were so suddenly and in some cases so tragically 

 drawn into the maelstrom of modern commerce. In the last analysis 

 this disturbance is one of the chief causes of world-wide unrest, since 

 equilibrium with environmerft is the first essential of happiness for 

 human groups. 



One of the greatest needs of our time is to discover what, for each type 

 of regional environment or milieu, are the real factors in readjustment 

 through which alone the recovery of equilibrium can be attained. What 

 is involved is readjustment to all the local conditions of the habitat in 

 the light of its new contact with other regions, its new place in the total 

 scheme of world relationships. Modern Denmark would seem to be an 

 admirable example of a successful readjustment of this kind. Statesman- 

 ship in such an Empire as ours is increasingly concerned with the task of 

 harmonising the interests of many groups cradled in different environ- 

 ments, diverse in race, mode of life and experience, but under the conditions 

 of the world to-day increasingly interdependent. Particularly is this 

 apparent in the problem of the readjustment of African societies, one of 

 the most critical and complex of our time, and one for the solution of 

 which Great Britain has incurred heavy responsibilities. Such problems 

 are as much geographical in character as those concerned with the regional 

 planning of English districts and equally demand detailed surveys by 

 investigators capable of analysing the social life and experience of human 

 groups in their whole geographical setting, and of appreciating the 

 significance of the new elements in their environment. De Preville's 

 Les Societes Africaines is a brilliant and well-known example of social 

 geography, admirably illustrating its main concepts, and, if a critical 

 examination of it often raises doubts as to the validity of some of its big 

 conclusions, that only the more emphasises the need for detailed local 

 work on these lines, now that material is becoming available. Attention 

 may be drawn to the series of papers to be given in a later session of this 

 section which will deal with the programme of the subcommittee on the 

 Human Geography of Tropical Africa, as an example of the contribution 

 which systematic work in social geography may make towards the better 

 understanding of these problems. 



The modern tendency in geography to think of the Earth in terms of 

 natural as opposed to artificial divisions should not lead to the neglect of 

 political geography in the proper sense of the term ; for the function 

 of political geography is to study and appraise the significance of politi- 

 cal and administrative units in relation to all the major geographical 



