324 The National Geographic Magazine 



greater Eastern question. The smaller 

 Eastern question centers upon the Bos- 

 phorus, and is that wherein Constanti- 

 nople and the Ottoman Empire are in- 

 volved. Formerly it seemed to cover all 

 the political sk5\ It is overshadowed 

 today by the problem of surpassing mag- 

 nitude still farther east. The factors 

 in the greater Eastern question are vari- 

 ous and many; yet there is one factor 

 that dwarfs them all. It is Russia in 

 her expanding, vivifying march across 

 Siberia. With her, as with no other 

 nation, goes what to the Oriental counts 

 more even than armies, and that is pres- 

 tige. Her .only possible Asiatic antag- 

 onist is Japan ; but the nature which 

 thousands of years have inwrought can- 

 not be radically changed by the signa- 

 ture of a parchment or by an act of the 

 will. The Oriental kisses not the hand 



he loves the dearest, but the hand he 

 fears the most. Despite the newlj^ as- 

 sumed garments of western civilization, 

 the Japanese are Oriental to the core. 

 The only European nation which can at 

 all vie with Russia is Great Britain ; but 

 in such possible contest Russia would 

 strike from near at hand and Great 

 Britain from far away. Moreover, not 

 only have Great Britain's hands been 

 tied and her resources strained, but her 

 militarj^ renown has, as the Oriental 

 judges, been shattered in the South 

 African war. Divergent interests and 

 mutual jealousies prevent a combination 

 of European powers under her leader- 

 ship against Russia, such as she was able 

 to accomplish against France in the Na- 

 poleonic wars. From the background 

 of Siberia one figure stands forth dis- 

 tinct — the triumphant Slav ! 



GERMAN GEOGRAPHERS AND GERMAN 



GEOGRAPHY 



By Martha Krug Genthe, Ph. D., Ann Arbor, Michigan 



OF the countries that have taken 

 an active part in the develop- 

 ment of geographic knowledge 

 Germany has always ranked among the 

 foremost. The love of travel, of strange 

 adventure, of tales true and tales false 

 which touch the imagination, is innate 

 in the Teutonic race. It made the north- 

 ern Vikings discoverers of America long 

 before Columbus ; it unveiled to them 

 the inhospitable coasts of Greenland and 

 Iceland ; it gave rise to the first known 

 North Polar expedition — the expedition 

 i7i ultiniam septentrionis axem of 1140 

 A. D., of which Adam von Bremen has 

 left .us an account. Indeed, we may 

 trace it down even to the recent travels 

 of the heroes of discover}^ of the last 

 century ; for, unlike the explorers of 



most other nations, the German travelers 

 were uninfluenced by political or eco- 

 nomic motives. It is only within the 

 last twent}" years that Germany has be- 

 gun to found colonies ; yet it has not 

 been the absence of the colonial spirit or 

 blindness to the advantages of coloniz- 

 ation which kept her in the rear. We 

 know that when the New World was dis- 

 covered German merchants, the Fuggers 

 of Augsburg, then the chiefs of the East 

 Indian commerce, were quick to grasp 

 the possibilities of the situation, and 

 founded branch establishments of their 

 houses in Lisbon, and in the coffee and 

 cocoa districts of South America ; but 

 the sad political conditions of the empire 

 at that time put an early end to these 

 aspirations, just as it did to the attempts 



