316 EDITORIAL 



Atlantic and the north Pacific. They will take a new lesson in 

 geography under the impulse of a grewsome interest and a 

 solicitous intensity not equaled since the early sixties. And 

 the public press with all its faults and errors will become one of 

 the most effective teachers. 



But even recourse to the best atlases will leave room for the 

 rectification of erroneous impressions unless used with a circum- 

 spection not often realized. Recourse to the globe is to be 

 urgently recommended. Every household which seeks to sur- 

 round itself with convenient means for promoting an accurate 

 intelligence of the great historical events of the passing days 

 may well provide its living room with a globe — not necessarily 

 large or expensive, for six-inch globes of fair accuracy and 

 detail are in the market at seventy-five cents apiece. Institu- 

 tions would do well to buy these by the dozen and use them for 

 all sorts of diagrammatic purposes. The globular presentment is 

 the true presentment of the earth ; the map is its false present- 

 ment in more than a rhetorical sense. 



To some extent public interest will extend to geologic fac- 

 tors. The distribution of coal is confessedly a pivotal element 

 in the contest and the natural sources of coal, as well as its com- 

 mercial distribution, will become familiar to thousands to whom 

 such facts, under conditions of peace, would appeal only with 

 indifference. The special configurations of the American and 

 Spanish coasts are certain to be studied with peculiar intensity. 

 The phenomena of sunken channels, of inlets and harbors, of 

 spits and bars, of reliefs of the land and like features of military 

 significance, will all take on an intensity of interest correspond- 

 ent to the great issues which may hang upon the aid or the 

 hindrance these features may give in the determination of 

 results. 



The actual contact with geographic and geologic phenomena 

 into which the hundred thousand young men, more or less, will 

 be brought as the result of the impending campaign will be to 

 them, and through them to others, a geographic education of no 

 little moment. It was observed at the close of the Civil War 



