GEOGRAPHIC EDUCATION — BRIGHAM. 493 
credit facilities in regions where trade was desired and they have 
decried the American sloth which did not learn foreign languages 
and acquaint itself with alien needs and tastes. The war has started 
a new era in American relations to the rest of the world. Our 
money, our food, our technical skill, and our manufactured prod- 
ucts will be wanted everywhere. The American traveler will no 
longer look longingly but in vain to find the American flag in ports 
across the seas. A world league, if it is to be and whatever it may 
be, will involve relations of communication and transportation, of 
production and manufacture, and of markets and economic depend- 
ence. The character of populations, their distribution and move, 
ments, mean a world of close and neighborly fellowship, the only 
alternative to friction and bloodshed. Geography offers much of the 
knowledge and will soften prejudice, reveal and avert our difficul- 
ties, and direct our progress." 
In the National Research Council geography now has its ap- 
pointed representatives organized in affiliation with the geological 
representatives of earth science. We have already noted the fact 
that the National Geographic Society has supported field research 
in several important fields. Within a few months the American 
Geographical Society has made a significant departure from previous 
policy in the decision to adopt henceforth as its chief work the 
study of Latin America. Upon the model of the Royal Geographical 
Society in taking Africa, for example, as a special field, it is deemed 
worthy and appropriate for the senior geographical society of 
America to devote its money and its expert knowledge to the south- 
ern lands of the Western Hemisphere. 
As the passage just cited intimates, geographic knowledge has be- 
come a new factor in the conduct of business. Conditions of produc- 
tion and manufacture, of transportation, market and sale, the world 
over, require for their balancing, both intensive and extensive famil- 
iarity with the facts and principles of geography, and in every phase 
of geography, phj^sical and human. Here is a body of knowledge 
that is not supplied by history, or economics, or by any branch of 
physical science. Geography in its program has added the higher 
to the lower realms of education and must attempt a comprehensive 
study of earth and man, a problem vast and baffling and at the same 
time mandatory and inspiring. 
Apparently as a result of the patent efficiency of geographers in 
the Shipping Board, the War Trade Board, and other Government 
organizations, it is now not uncommon for large concerns to employ 
geographical experts to solve the problems and answer the difficult 
questions involved in world trade. Resources, climate, distances, 
routes, racial traits, and local tastes are all here involved. 
