492 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1919. 
" Germany's profoundest aggressions and her largest hopes were 
involved in her project for a Middle Europe. This meant, to begin 
with, the actual subjugation of seaports in southern England, the 
destruction of France as an industrial nation by the acquisition of 
her supply of coal and iron in the north and of every industry on 
her Belgian border, the subjugation of Belgium, the ultimate over- 
running of Holland, and the free use of the great corridor route 
down the Danube through Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey 
to Constantinople, Syria, and the Persian Gulf. It meant that the 
entire Old World, the great land mass of three continents, was to be 
bisected in its very vitals. It meant ultimately the destruction of the 
British Empire and the throttling of India, which would be left in a 
state of anarchy or under the German heel. It meant ultimate ag- 
gressions in China, commercial or political sovereignty of South 
America, and, in the not distant future, German vengeance upon 
North America." - 
Geographic conditions have in all ages influenced the conduct of 
war and controlled strategic plans and tactical operations. Never 
before, however, has a great nufnber of geographical and geological 
experts attended upon armies at the front or supplied in such ample 
measure the data for determining the outlines of countries and the 
terms of peace. On every front, English, French, American, Ger- 
man, and others, students of earth science were pitted against each 
other in studying natural resources and supplies, lines of communi- 
cation, drainage, the location of divides, the forms of valleys and 
escarpments, the fluctuation of streams, the soil, subsoil, and bed- 
rock, the position of water table, climatological conditions, etc.^ 
Military geography, it may be said, is of interest to specialists in 
war, bujt the changes in political geography and economic relations 
following upon the war have made this branch of knowledge vital to 
every citizen of the world. 
The war has given geography a fresh and unwonted interest in 
America, because we have gained a new sense of the significance and 
permanence of international relations. This is true, whatever forms 
these relations assume, whether of expanded trade, courts of arbitra- 
tion, or any kind of association to promote peace and justice. The 
principle involved has been elsewhere set forth by the writer.* 
" The war has vividly exhibited the financial interdependence 
of all nations. American consuls in foreign cities have for years 
protested against the failure to provide American banking and 
2 Geography and the War, by the present writer, Jour. Geog., XIX, 91-92, March, 1920. 
° See outline of address by Col. Alfred H. Brooks, Sc. D., Proc. Educ. Congress, Dept. 
Pub. Instruction, Commonwealth of Penn., Harrisburg, 1920, pp. 540-547. Also by the 
same author, " The Use of Geology on the Western Front," Professional Paper 128-D, 
pp. 85-124, in Shorter Contributions to General Geology, U. S. Geol. Surv., 1920. 
* Geography after the War. Educational Rev., vol. 57, p. 284, April, 1919. 
