102 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



groupings, whether physical, ethnographic, social or economic, which affect 

 mankind. It is essentially an aspect of adjustment to geographical 

 environment, and it is precisely because it is so closely related to other 

 aspects of adjustment, which, in the influences that they exert, are often 

 conflicting, that equilibrium is so difficult to attain. The study of the 

 mode in which geographical conditions have helped to mould the evolution 

 of states in the past is of absorbing interest, however complex and difficult. 

 The existence of favourable areas of characterisation possessing a con- 

 siderable amount of natural protection, such as the English Plain and the 

 Central Lowlands of Scotland, within which the social contact of originally 

 different racial and social groups was easy, certainly provided the medium 

 through which in Western Europe strong nation-states tended to take 

 shape. The group consciousness which we call nationality seems to have 

 followed rather than preceded the actual formation of such states. 

 Nationality arose in relation to environmesit and widened its scope and 

 allegiance with the increase of economic and political contact. Thus, 

 Kentish and East Anglian patriotism, without entirely disappearing, 

 were gradually merged into the larger conception of English patriotism. 

 So, too, later, when greater intimacy of contact and realisation of the 

 economic advantages of co-operation had furnished the raison d'etre of the 

 Union of England and Scotland, and the political unity of the entire 

 island had been achieved, English and Scottish patriotism were corres- 

 pondingly but only very gradually enlarged. Since the forces promoting 

 the contacts and economic interdependence of regions are operating on 

 a much bigger scale in the world of to-day then ever before, we might 

 expect to see this process of political integration even more strongly 

 marked, and the rapid territorial growth of the United States and other 

 large political entities can be quoted as examples of it. But in the 

 reconstituted Europe of our time we see this process arrested and even 

 reversed. It is only 30 years ago that W. Z. Ripley, in his great work 

 on The Races of Europe, after discussing the reasons for the extension 

 of the Roumanian people over what he terms ' the natural barrier ' of the 

 Carpathians into Transylvania, asserted that ' geographical law, more 

 powerful than human will, ordains that this latter natural area of 

 characterisation — the great plain-basin of Hungary — should be the seat 

 of a single political unit. There is no resource but that the Roumanians 

 should in Hungary (which then, of course, included Transylvania) accept 

 the division from their fellows over the mountains as final for all political 

 purposes.' The prophecy has been falsified ; the ' law ' has been broken, 

 although at the price of much economic dislocation, and in the arrange- 

 ment of the Succession States the unity of the great plain-basin has been 

 ignored. 'Nationality, as tested by linguistic and cultural affinities, 

 rather than the economic orientation indicated by the physical conditions, 

 has been accepted as the main criterion of the new units, although there 

 is frequent departure from this principle. The New Europe is admittedly 

 a great experiment in political geography. Its success would seem to 

 depend on the possibility of reconciling the different factors. The most 

 stable political units are undoubtedly those which most correspond to 

 geographical realities, but these realities are not wholly limited to con- 

 siderations of physical and economic geography. The distribution of 



