GEOGRAPHY AND CULTURE 



IT has been often remarked how much 

 the various wars of the past ten 

 years have educated the people in 

 geography. Southeastern Europe, South 

 Africa, the West Indies, the China 

 coast, Japan, Korea, and Siberia have 

 in their turn been ' ' discovered ' ' by mil- 

 lions of people who had previously en- 

 tertained very hazy notions as to their 

 existence on the face of the earth. Yet, 

 rather singularly, there are more com- 

 plaints today concerning the ignorance 

 of geography among all classes, high 

 and low, than ever before. 



The universities, colleges, and schools 

 are under more criticism than hitherto 

 for their alleged failure to give to geog- 

 raphy, broadly considered, its proper 

 place in their courses of study. A year 

 or two ago Mr Bryce delivered an ad- 

 dress before a geographical society in 

 England in which he emphasized the 

 importance of geography in any scheme 

 of education or culture. Eord Salis- 

 bury, not long before he died, surprised 

 his countrymen by saying that many of 

 their misconceptions concerning inter- 

 national questions originated in the 

 misleading scales of the maps of differ- 

 ent countries and continents. It needs 

 but a moment's reflection, indeed, to be 

 convinced that while people in general 

 have lately increased their stock of 

 geographical knowledge, owing to these 

 sensational wars and the closer jostling 

 of the nations, we have only begun to 

 realize how ignorant we are concerning 

 the earth we live upon. 



The great extent of the average per- 

 son's real ignorance of geography is 

 almost invariably shown whenever he 

 begins to probe into some question of 

 history or international politics. Very 

 soon he discovers, rather to his surprise, 

 that the whole matter may rest upon 

 some simple fact of geography. A classic 

 illustration is the discovery of America, 



which was the immediate result of the 

 closing of the old Mediterranean trade 

 routes to the Orient by the conquering 

 Turks. Most people have a general 

 idea that Columbus was seeking a new 

 way to the Indies when he made his 

 historic voyage, yet they never get far 

 enough along to understand clearly why 

 he was seeking that route. They do not 

 know anything about the ancient routes 

 through Asia Minor and around the 

 Black Sea and what the Turks did to 

 them. History cannot be intelligently 

 understood, of course, without a clear 

 knowledge of the geography of history. 

 Huxley believed this so strongly that he 

 never read a book of history or travels 

 or international politics without an atlas 

 by his side for constant reference. Yet 

 most of the histories that are published 

 even in our time are singularly deficient 

 in good maps, and, strange to say, the 

 great Cambridge series of modern his- 

 tory, planned by the late Lord Acton, 

 contains not a single map in the first 

 four volumes already printed. 



Certain facts of geography account 

 for very much of what goes on in our 

 own time. The Boer war cannot be thor- 

 oughly understood unless one knows the 

 peculiar relation that South Africa bears 

 to India and Australia from the British 

 point of view. The war between Rus- 

 sia and Japan is an insoluble mystery 

 until one observes the position of Korea 

 and the Sea of Japan with reference to 

 the Russian outlet upon the Pacific. 

 Why is Russia today such a despotism ? 

 Even that question should be answered 

 in the light of the geography of the 

 Russia of Ivan the Terrible and Peter 

 the Great. What makes Ireland so 

 poor ? The climate, due to the island's 

 geographical position with reference to 

 the trade winds of the Atlantic, cannot 

 be ignored in seeking an explanation of 

 Ireland's position the past sixty years. 



* From the Springfield Republican, December 18, 1904. 



