The Use of Practical Geography Illustrated by Recent Frontier Operations

ALL good geographers will rejoice in the fact that a school of geography is likely to be started at the University of Oxford, the first school of its sort that has ever been inaugurated in England.And, if we think of the vast interests that England owns in the wide world of geography, her colonies, her conquests, and her commerce, it seenls strange indeed that, in recognizing the necessity for the inclusion of geography in her wide curriculum of university teaching, she should have waited on the initiative of other countries, whose interests are but the shadow of her own.But university teaching, immensely valuable as it cannot fail to be, can llardly e2ztend beyond the academic stage.The processes of geographical evolution in all their many branches, the intimate relation of geography to history, to archeology, to geology, together with something, perhaps, of the rudiments of those methods by which geographical facts are represented (i.e.cartographjr), all these things nlay be taught effectually in such a school, but into the regions of the hard practical attainment of ,eographical knowledge it ccln hardly enter.It is this practical phase of the subject that I wish to introduce to your notice to-night, and to show you, if I can, of what immense importance it is to our national business, whether commercial, military, or political.A knowledge of geography most intitnately aff8ects matters naval and military.On this point there is no division of opinion now, whatever there may have been formerly.And because the importance of this knowledge is so fully recognized by our sailors and our soldiers, I need not