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The National Geographic Magazine 



a leaven that was distributed at the right 

 time and it is now bearing a splendid 

 fruition. Millions of young patriotic 

 Americans have received their greatest 

 inspiration from that work. They have 

 learned not only of the strength of the 

 American Republic, but, what is better, 

 they have learned from that great work 

 its weaknesses. Forewarned is fore- 

 armed, and today I venture to say there 

 is many a man in the national halls of 

 legislation who is a wiser legislator ; there 

 is many a man casting his ballot who 

 today will cast it on the side of righteous- 

 ness and good government because he 

 read that work written by a fair, im- 

 partial, analytical mind ; and the National 

 Geographic Society is glad to recognize 

 in that author tonight the Ambassador 

 from Great Britain, who will speak to us 

 on the subject of geography. 



THE BRITISH AMBASSADOR, 

 HON. JAMES BRYCE 



Mr Vice-President, Mr President, 

 Members of the National Geographic So- 

 ciety, Ladies and Gentlemen : I thank you, 

 Mr President, for your very friendly and 

 cordial reference to myself, for which I 

 am most grateful. Perhaps, however, 

 you will allow me to enter a very mild 

 and deferential protest against one term 

 which you applied to me. No English- 

 man, I hope, considers himself when in 

 the United States to be a foreigner. 



This, ladies and gentlemen, is a very 

 interesting and a very cheerful occasion. 

 It must be a cheerful occasion to you who 

 have just been informed that your So- 

 ciety now has reached more than thirty 

 thousand members, which I think must 

 be equal to all the geographic societies of 

 Europe put together. You have an 

 abundant revenue which you well spend 

 on the purposes of geography. The oc- 

 casion is to many of us particularly en- 

 joyable on account of the presence of a 

 distinguished explorer from a nation 

 which has great claims upon the recogni- 

 tion of geographers. He is of the nation 

 whence came the Icelander Eric the Red, 

 who was the first discoverer of America, 



and who was none the less the discoverer 

 of America because he did not know he 

 had discovered it. And Commander 

 Amundsen is also the fellow-countryman 

 of, I think, the man who performed the 

 most extraordinary feat of daring and 

 endurance in the pursuit of geographical 

 knowledge that the history of the world 

 records, Dr-Fridtjof Nansem 



Nevertheless, . I always feel a little 

 touch of sadness when I am in a com- 

 pany of people devoted to geography, be- 

 cause geography is to me by far the most 

 attractive and enjoyable of ' all pursuits, 

 and I have a misgiving that I mistook my 

 vocation when I took to history and poli- 

 tics and did not become a traveler and a 

 geographer. Is there any study or pur- 

 suit which has so many sources of enjoy- 

 ment and is altogether so attractive as the 

 study of geography. 



Geography, to begin with, is one of 

 those things which everybody can follow. 

 In many branches of science now the 

 amateur has a hard time. Science has 

 reached such a point of specialistic de- 

 velopment that an amateur has practically 

 no chance of making discoveries. But in 

 geography we can all do something. 

 Everybody can do a little bit of explora- 

 tion, and make it thorough. I don't 

 doubt you all have even done so in the 

 case of some part of the country which 

 was within your reach, and that you have 

 succeeded in knowing a bit of the sur- 

 face of this earth better than anybody 

 else knew it before. That is something 

 to say in an age like this. 



In the next place geography has the 

 great attraction and the immense interest 

 of being the meeting point of all the 

 natural sciences. Geology, botany, min- 

 eralogy, zoology, meteorology, some 

 branches of physics, such as electricity 

 and magnetism, and of course astronomy 

 also, all touch and flow into geography. 

 It is their meeting point; it takes some- 

 thing from each of them and gather 

 together into one center for its investiga- 

 tions knowledge drawn from these dif- 

 ferent scientific lines of inquiry which 

 bear upon the constitution of our planet- 



