106 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 
which it confers are constantly being bestowed here and confiscated there ; 
and a vigilant geography is possibly more essential at this point than at 
any other. It is true, says Chisholm, that man cuts through an isthmus 
if it is in his way; but geography determines what isthmuses to cut, 
and deploys the local conditions which man must understand before he 
decides to act. Railways are amenable to the same set of considerations ; 
so are harbours: geography has a powerful say in the alinement of the 
former and the location of the latter. Many generations may not pass 
before transport by air has revolutionised all this, and left our railways 
and highroads as curiosities in the same category as our English canal 
system to-day. But, like the free extraction of electrical energy, this 
is a contingency which we can leave geography to deal with when the 
moment arrives. Meanwhile it should be teaching us something of what 
has been done to make transport easier and shorter, and pointing the way 
to further advance in the same direction. 
If commerce and industry, the lifeblood of the progressive races of 
mankind, are becoming more and more dependent on sound geographical 
knowledge, is it heresy to step down for an instant, and suggest that 
geography might also help man to enjoy his life? In one of the latest 
manuals on the United States, it was refreshing to find an enthusiastic 
page about the Yellowstone Park and the Grand Cafion. Might it not 
be possible, in text-books on our own land, to hear a little about the 
Scottish highlands, or the Welsh mountains, or the Cumberland lakes ? 
And generally, would it be practicable, without poaching on Baedeker, 
to touch here and there on the beauty spots of the world, or even to 
mention, in passing, a great picture-gallery or a famous shrine ? 
Let me, with apologies for this lapse into esthetics, return to the country 
in which we were asking geography to tell us something of its residents, 
its primary products, its industries and its means of transport. It is not 
the only country in the world ; and by the time that we have pursued 
similar investigations for its neighbours, we shall have reached two 
incidental conclusions of some importance. One is the intimate alliance 
which must be established between geography and economics. ‘They 
have become sister sciences. On its commercial side geography’s kin- 
ship with economics is just as close as it is with geology on the physical 
side ; the only difference in the relationship being that, whereas on the 
structural side of its work geography builds upon data provided by 
geology, on the human side it may very well, without loss of self-respect, 
engage itself in furnishing reliable material for the economist. The 
second conclusion is borne in upon us as we study the movements of 
population, the changes in industry which are liable to throw whole 
divisions of the labour army out of employment, the competition for 
markets, and all the struggle for existence on the earth’s crust. They 
suggest that geography may become a more useful agency than hitherto 
for locating danger-spots in the world from the standpoint of international 
peace. There are plenty of Naboth’s vineyards in our midst, and an 
intelligent study of geography should help to identify at least some of 
them, and to warn in time whatever organisation the nations may entrust 
with the policing of our unruly humankind. 
