THE SCIENCE 0E FBONTIEB DELIMITATION. 
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There is only one other remark of Captain McMahon’s that I wish to refer to : 
he said that a river was not a satisfactory boundary. I have heard other people 
say the same thing and I did not wish to make a point of that. My point is that 
it is a satisfactory boundary from the delimiter’s or demarcator’s point of view, 
because it gives him no work at all. 
The Chairman —Gentlemen, I think there is one thing that must have struck 
us in listening to the lecture and discussion to-night and that is, that both of 
those who have taken part in this work of boundary demarcation have certainly 
not glorified their office; for the one subject, which it seems to me they have 
omitted to bring before you, is the enormous importance of it, its great extent 
and variety in every part of the world and the natures and variety of the 
qualifications required for it. If you consider what delimitation, including 
demarcation, means: that it means practically the whole of political geography 
as far as the frontier is concerned; that all the frontiers have to be created by 
delimitation and demarcation; that it means the end of war and the beginning of 
peace; that it is the great question on which war or peace usually turns ; that it 
marks what has been gained by the conclusion of the last great war and what will 
probably be the subject of the next great war; that the Alsace Lorraine question, 
for instance, is a question of delimitation ; that we lost the province of Maine, 
which ought to be ours beyond all question, by a sheer blunder of demarcation or 
delimitation or both ; that in the near future we shall have an enormously im¬ 
portant demarcation, in the case of Venezuela—I think you will recognise what I 
mean. There is a frontier which you may see now, within a few days’ passage of 
London, marked out by two sets of stones placed on open fields or on common 
roads. On the one set is the Eagle of the German Empire; on the other, the 
Eagle of the French Eepublic. Those stones have been placed by the process of 
delimitation and demarcation. They are the outcome of the contest of two great 
nations and represent the struggle both of their arms and of their diplomacy. I 
think, therefore, that you will see that the subject is one of the largest possible 
importance. I do not think I should call either delimitation or demarcation a 
science; I should rather call them arts, but they require the knowledge of a 
number of other arts and some little science for their proper execution. The 
frontier between France and Germany, for instance, depended for its delimitation 
in the first instance upon the arts of war and diplomacy. It might have been 
very easily blundered in its demarcation without a thorough knowledge of the art 
of war and without skill in diplomacy. Next comes in the whole question of 
those sciences which leads up directly to geography and topography and any 
number of other matters such as knowledge of languages, skill in organisation, 
the maintenance under very difficult circumstances of discipline and order, and of 
friendly relations with natives and foreign colleagues or opponents, with the 
whole art of the traveller in such regions, especially as those of the Niger or the 
Afghan frontiers, so that quite a variety of qualities are required for it and almost 
all of them qualities which are more within the grasp of the soldier than of any¬ 
body else ; so that I think it is work which offers to you a field that is worth your 
setting before yourselves. It does require and has required the work of all ranks 
of soldiers. The country that has to delimitate and demarcate does call upon 
soldiers of all ranks, from the general to the private practically, to do the work. 
The great frontier of Turkey, after the 1877 war with Russia, was carried out by 
parties consisting of general officers, colonels, captains and privates, and each of 
them had their different functions and work to do of the most important character 
possible. Of course the whole thing originally occupied the attention of diplo¬ 
matists beforehand and many points were laid down definitely by them; but the 
whole interpretation of what had been settled by diplomacy, as well as the difficult 
