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CONTRIBUTIONS OF GEOGRAPHY

DOUGLAS W. JOHNSON

ONE evening during the war there gathered at the Cercle

Interallié in Paris a group of six or eight British, French, and American geographers and geologists, to compare notes and profit by the sharing of experiences. One had just come to Paris from British General Headquarters to search libraries and university laboratories for material needed in his work of supplying to the British armies information about the surface features of Northern France. Two were engaged as geographical experts on the French Comité d'Etudes, an organization charged with assembling scientific data which would be needed by the French representatives at the coming Peace Conference. Another was a member of the "Inquiry," a similar organization created in America by Colonel House at the direction of the President, and was at that time in Paris on duty for the" Inquiry" and as foreign representative of the Division of Geology and Geography of the National Research Council. ` Three were members of the Commission de Géographie, a branch of the Service Géographique of the French Army, occupied with the task of supplying the fighting forces of France with detailed geographical information about every region where those forces might be called upon to operate. One had assisted in training future officers of the American Army in geographical methods, and was now at the head of a war work bureau in France. It is a significant fact that the hazards of war could throw together in one place such a group of men, each of whom had been actively engaged in placing

earth science at the service of the Allies in order to hasten the day of victory. And the fact loses none of its significance when we add that not one of these men was satisfied that full advantage was being taken of the possibilities of his science as an aid in war.

It is not the purpose of the present writer to criticize the shortcomings of our own or any other government in utilizing earth science in the military program. It is rather my purpose to regard the brighter side of the shield, and to show by a brief review of pertinent facts that geography and geology did at least play an important rôle in the common task of wresting victory from the enemy. In accomplishing this purpose I cannot pretend to describe, nor even mention, all the channels through which the geographer and geologist made their important contributions. I must content myself with a very imperfect account of some aspects only of the work done in these two sciences, aspects which happened to fall under my personal observation. Fortunately, that of itself is sufficient to demonstrate the great possibilities of these sciences as military adjuncts, should their full strength ever be mobilized in the country's service. Let me begin at random with a short statement of some of the first efforts of our British colleagues.

Early in the war Dr. H. N. Dickson, Professor of Geography at University College, Reading, appreciating the importance of geography in connection with military operations, sought to establish a geographical bureau in connection with one of the departments of the British Government. At that time the War Office was so crowded with work that he turned to the Admiralty where there was less confusion, and under its auspices established a geographical bureau manned by a staff of men and women who were for the most part volunteers serving without pay. At the beginning his staff was housed in the rooms of the Royal Geographical Society, but it soon increased to such a size that special quarters were necessary, and these were secured by utilizing Hertford House in Manchester Square, an art gallery containing the Wallace Collections. The

collections were in large part removed, temporary walls and doors were erected, and a great staff of workers was soon turning out large volumes of geographical material for use by the British Army and Navy. Here the visitor found one gallery filled with long tables, each table devoted to a particular region such as Hungary, Belgium, or Serbia, filled with appropriate books and maps, and presided over by a specialist assigned to prepare a monograph on that region. A number of assistants, most of them men and some of them army officers, served under each specialist. In another gallery a corps of translators, mostly women, were at work translating and abstracting such foreign reports as the specialists and their assistants might desire. Two other rooms were equipped with drawing tables, and here, perhaps, a dozen or so draughtsmen and cartographers were busy making maps. One or two rooms were devoted to the meteorological staff, which assembled data and prepared maps and charts for this branch of the service. It was an impressive sight to witness this great body of scientific workers busy at the task of collecting geographical data for the use of Britain's fighting forces.

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Many of the reports prepared by this geographical staff were of a highly confidential character; but it is permissible to state that the documents issued included a series of Handbooks" describing the climate, topography, economic resources, transportation routes, and political geography of the many regions in which the British soldier might be called to fight in a world war; more elaborate "Manuals" of certain regions or problems of special significance, accompanied by Atlases of detailed maps portraying the topography, geology, rainfall, economic products, railways and other lines of communications, distribution of races and languages, and other geographical data which might be useful in very detailed studies; new maps of regions for which satisfactory cartographic material had not previously been published, and special maps and reports to elucidate a variety of problems for the solution of which different departments of the Government asked geographical

assistance; and charts of pressures, winds, and other meteorological elements for use by the flying forces of both the army and navy. Much credit is due to Professor Dickson for foreseeing, and to his large staff of assistants for supplying, a wide range of geographic needs of Britain's fighting machine.

But it was not alone in the Admiralty that geographic work for war purposes was being prosecuted, although we have seen that Professor Dickson found a better opening there than in the War Office. The Department of Military Intelligence of the latter bureau included in its complex organization the Geographic Section of the General Staff, whose chief was Colonel W. C. Hedley, and under whose direction were prepared the countless maps upon which the British armies fought their way to victory. It was this same geographic section which also prepared many of the maps used at the Peace Conference. In the various branches of the Department of Military Intelligence professional historians, geographers, and other experts, commissioned as officers of the General Staff, were busy throughout the war studying frontier and other geographical problems; and at the Peace Conference they contributed their part to the making of the treaties. Among the younger geographers well known to Americans was Captain A. S. Ogilvie, who was recalled from the Balkans where he had utilized his special training in making new maps for the military forces, to become an active participant at Paris in the geographical work of delimiting the new frontiers of Europe.

The Royal Geographical Society, always more closely in touch with its Government than is commonly the case with the geographical societies of America, set for itself tasks of no small magnitude. Thus under the direction of its President, Sir Thomas Holdich, the Society undertook the preparation of a topographic map of Europe and the Near East on a scale of 1:1,000,000, a similar map of Africa on a scale of 1 :2,000,000 and a map of Asia on a scale of 1:5,000,000. These maps were designed for various uses by the War Office, and for certain of the peace conference work. For the Foreign Office the