GEOGRAPHY FOR EVERY CIVIZEN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 10, Issue 246, 10 March 1944, Page 8

GEOGRAPHY FOR EVERY CIVIZEN

(Condensed from an address by PROFESSOR

G.

JOBBERNS

, M.A. D.Sc., of

Canterbury University College, at the inaugural meeting of the Wellington branch

of the New Zealand Geographical Society)

TONINUS was Emperor of Rome. These words of his that I take as the whole text of my address this evening belong to the period around 160-180 A.D.. Marcus Aurelius was a very competent Emperor. He was also a very enlightened Roman, coming near to the ideal of the philosopher king. He knew his Roman world as few other citizens of his Rome and his era. He knew personally its far-eastern borders and its northern limits on the Rhine and the Danube. To know his world in all its physical and social phases was to him necessary for full and enlightened living within it. But like all Romians in all the life of the Empire, he seems to have been singularly. uncurious about the world beyond the Imperial borders. Much of his life and energy was devoted to keeping his Roman world intact from pressure from the outer darkness. Exploration of northern Europe or Inner Asia, or Africa beyond the Saharan borders, or the wide Atlantic sea seems to have had little or no appeal to the Roman. Descriptive writers there certainly were in the world of antiquity, e.g., Pliny and Herodotus. Herodotus especially had many of the instincts of the geographer, but his ideas of what lay beyond the confines of the well-known Mediterranean world were | hazy in the extreme, and he seems to have been uncritically credulous in accepting accounts of the outer world that he did not personally know. There was no provision in the Roman world for mass instruction of the people and the educated minority seemed content so long as the world they knew held together for them to live comfortably in. When this world fell to pieces about their ears, from the surge of forces from without which they did not know and did not understand, they were hopelessly bewildered. Can you not find plenty of parallels to this in very modern times? Nature and Function of Geography I must keep in mind that I am tonight speaking especially to a group of citizens interested in the formation of a Geographical Society. Many of you I know to be interested in geography because you are interested in teaching, professionally or indirectly. To you teachers I would like to take the opportunity of saying something specially-what I want to urge to all of you is that a sound knowledge of our own country and its place in the general world order is absolutely necessary for our full and intelligent living. Understanding can only be based on accurate knowledge. M ARCUS AURELIUS AN-

I have never at any time made any claim that the study of geography has any special value as an educational discipline. But I feel sure that all of you will be ready to admit that a citizen should have some understanding of the society in which he lives. If you will then further admit that he cannot possibly get this understanding without knowledge of the habitat on which his society is based, then I need urge the claims of geography

no further. Knowledge of our own immediate living space, land area, or habitat, is not enough. We must understand the place and function of our own country in the world as a whole. What, then, is geography and its function? Geography, however you may approach it, is simply description and interpretation of the human habitat or the land surface as used by human groups. The geography of New Zealand is merely description and interpretation of all the various aspects of the New Zealand countryside. The special task of those of you who teach geography in our schools is to bring our young people’ around to an understanding of their countryside. To do this you must know it yourselves--know it in all its physical forms, and~know how it has all been changed by a hundred ye>re af occupation by European man. You must know the general history of this progressive change, know how the form and function of our present society is based on the way we have used our land, and know how we have made for ourselves the place we hold in the economic and social order of the world. I should think that is your first task as teachers,

In the English-speaking world there are two great geographical societies of outstanding influence. These are the Royal Geographical Society of London, and the American Geographical Society of New York. Membership (or fellowship) of either of these great societies is not difficult to secure. All that is required in the way of qualification for. membership is a general interest in the furthering of geographic’ knowledge. Both have done much to gather know--ledge, but their best and most lasting influence is through the dissemination of this knowledge by the medium of geographical publications distributed to all parts of the world. The outstanding geographical journal in English is the Geographical Review, the journal of the American Geographical Society of New York. The Royal Geographical Society has had a very long and very distinguished history. Its journal is best known as a medium for publication of articles that tend to be of a purely descriptive nature. It has served nobly in the encouragement of exploration, and articles descriptive of ‘the lesser-known and out-of-the-way corners of the world still fill the pages of the Geographical Journal. A Magazine Everybody Knows Perhaps the most remarkable of all organisations for the dissemination of geographical knowledge in a popular form that has universal appeal is the National Geographical Society. with its headquarters in Washington, D.C. Mem- ’ "bership of this society merely involves subscription to the National Geographic Magazine. Everybody knows it. It is lavishly illustrated and distributed monthly to around a million members. I think that membership of the New Zealand Geographical Society should extend far beyond those people who are professionally interested in the teaching of geography. Publication of a first-class geographical magazine should be our goal in New Zealand. The Canterbury members have already talked about it and suggested it be called the New Zealand Geographical Review. We can also clearly see the possibility of raising it to a high standard among publications of its kind. All we want is a wide basis of membership support. However, I will not press this matter further just now. New Zealand Is Unique Geographically New Zealand is a country of unique interest. In a brief century a people of British stock has transformed a group of Pacific islands into a new Britain in the South Seas. An original flora, scarcely altered by the Mace (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) who got here a few centuries before us, has been almost stripped away. A new flora-a European flora for the most part-has taken its place. A completely new fauna-notably the European ox and the sheep-is the main basis of our economy. The native fauna has largely gone with the forest flora that supported it. In total, the making of the New Zealand countryside to-day has been an enormous job-the collective work of a few generations of our people. The story of the transformation of the New Zealand countryside is something that our young people should have for the fuller understanding and appreciation of their heritage. Guthrie Smith has told us something of it in Tutira. Bruce Levy has contributed something to this historical geography too, in his studies of Taranaki. Cockayne and a host of others working in the specialised field of botany have given us much. Workers in agricultural science, soil survey, and geology have amassed a wealth of knowledge in their respective fields. This is the raw material of geography. Description of the New Zealand land-scape-and interpretation of the development of this landscape in its present form; the distribution of our people over the face of the country and explanation of how their lives is conditioned by the way we use our fundamental resources; the appraisal of these resources and examination of ways and means of our possible better use of them, and study of ways in which our habitat resources have been misused-all this is within the field of geography. "Integration That We Need" We have already, as I have remarked, amassed a great deal of knowledge in all sorts of specialised fields. It is integration of this that we need. Geography is essentially an integration of knowledge. In my opinion, incomparably the best factual contribution yet made to New Zealand geography is the Centennial Atlas. Unfortunately the publication of this has been indefinitely held up by the war. It should have been published, whatever else was neglected. It should be in the library of every educational institution in the country. Perhaps some of you will wonder at this stage why I have made no mention of Professor Cotton’s magnificent work in geomorphology. I have not overlooked it. Geomorphology belongs to geology-and Cotton’s systematic studies of geomorphology with special reference to the New Zealand physical landscape, are an outstanding contribution to that science. Perhaps, too, some of you have been wondering whether I have overlooked the work of the Tourist and Publicity Department in interpreting us to the outside world. Their work is probably excellent in its way, but . . . infinitely more I like the ideas of John Pascce who wants, by simple explanatory descriptions accompanied by first-class pictures, to portray the ordinary everyday living of our people. He is by instinct a geographer. I imagine that our journal would circulate mainly among. our own people. By exchange and subscription large numbers of copies would regularly go abroad. This overseas circulation would be of immense benefit to the country at

large, but the best service of the journal would be to ourselves. A public better informed and geographically minded would see and understand their country as a whole. This would be a valuable antidote to a parochial regionalism in outlook that is a remarkable characteristic of our people. Regions and Regionalism Regions are to a geographer what rocks and fossils are to a geologist, plants to a botanist, or fish to a marine zoologist. The task of geographers is the explanatory description of the tegions of the world. They talk a lot

about regions, and sometimes their professional jargon gets wordy and rather nebulous. But a region is simply a piece of the. world that has some special distinguishing character. A region has area and distinguishing character. Anyone who pursues the business of systematic geographic description comes inevitably to consciousness of regionalism. With a student of mine embarking on a treatise on land use in Paparua County, I made a preliminary traverse across the area. At the end of it, he had immediately clear in his mind that the county comprised a number of areas distinctly different from each other and used in very different ways. He had caught on at once to the most useful idea in geographic description-the recognition of areas with some distinctive character that marked them off from adjacent areas. This was in a small piece of Canterbury like Paparua County. Do you not think at once of New Zealand as an assemblage of distinct regionseach with different resources or potential resources of surface and soil and vegetation and the like? But regionalism is something more ‘than this. It is a very powerful force conditioning the lives and economic, social, and political outlooks of human groups. Its. power over men in the United States, for example, seems to over-ride, at times, the force of nationalism. How often do we find the South thinking and acting in national affairs as a separate unit or bloc? Or the Middle-West? Or New. England? Or the Pacific Coast? The reason is simply

that the South is an entirely different country from the Middle-West, or New England, or the Pacific Coast States. "East Asia for the Japanese" is merely an expression of regionalism on a wider scale. So is the idea of Western Hemisphere hegemony. So is the conflict of interest and outlook between North and South. Geography and War The war has made us all map-con-scious. Places .we never heard ‘of, like the Perekop Isthmus, and Novorossisk were for a time at least, household

words. But did not the war. reveal in us an appalling ignorance of the realities of the Pacific world. Our people were not alone in this. The United States, leading the world in its teaching of geography in school and university, was, taken by and large, just as thoroughly ignorant. There, with the coming of war, professional geographers were in demand. University schools of geography became headquarters for the instruction of Army, Navy and Ait Force cadets in thousands. John Leighley, leader in United States climatology and world authority in that field, went in the direction of a great new school of meteorology at Grand Rapids. Sauer, of Berkeley, went off on a goodwill mission to the West Coast of South America. For two years I was privileged to have with: me at Canterbury College, Andrew Clark, a young geographer from the University of California at Berkeley. On his return, he was immediately employed in the instruction of some 300 Army and Navy cadets in cartography. He is now at John Hopkins in Baltimore busy in the instruction of young men for work with Amgot in Europe. In Christchurch, when our young men were being taken from us as soon as they turned 18, he put up a suggestion to the Army that if our students were left with us for their first two years, we would have them equipped with everything in the way of Army cartography that could be desired. The Army sent along to see us a Captain of Intele ligence who was really, it seemed to us, (continued on next page)

Knowing The World We Live In

(continued from previous page) without intelligence. We could do nothing to convince him of the possibilities, and the scheme fell through. I had the impression that he was afraid to get himself involved in something that was not explicitly provided for in some book of ruies and regulations. Maps of the Future The war has.done one excellent service for geography in New Zealand. Before it, we were handicapped by the absence of any but a very few decent topographic maps. A project for the mapping of the country'is well under way, and some excellent mile to the inch sheets have been produced, Here, while on this topic of geography and war, I might interpolate a few remarks especially for those of you who are teachers of geography in ‘the schools. The war has brought amazing development in air travel and transport. We have to think of time and distance in entirely new terms. You will have to rebuild our ideas of the old "ship geography" you have been teaching so long. Your traditional. wall map of the ' world of Mercator’s projection" showing shipping routes and the British Empire in red gives a quite erroneous idea of what relative locations and distances

really are. You will have to think in terms of an "air-age geography." Of all this, American schools are already conscious and young Americans are being brought up to see their country on maps built on types of polar projection that give more real pictures of the place of their country relative to the rest. of the world. However, you will all see readily enough the implications of this, Geography and Geopolitics Geopolitics has become a very popular field for study in recent years. Many geographers, especially those interested ~ in political geography, have plunged into geopolitics. . Haushofer seems to have contributed most to the exalting of geopolitics into a study that had something of the appearance of an exact science, Distinguished military officer, turned geographer, he set up his famous school of geopolitics in Munich. About him he assembled a large body of competent young men, among them many geographers. As a fact-collecting organisation, they contributed much to a thorough-going survey and appraisal of the resources of the German homeland or living space. This in itself was the practical application of geography in the best and fullest sense.

Out of it came the amazing claims for extension of the Lebensraum of the German people. Geopolitics became what Haushofer himself would call "a guide to political life." Big sections of Hitler's Mein Kampf are. probably pure Haushofer. Geopolitik, as he conceived it, was a "science" of violence, a justification for violent aggression in any form. Last year, the magazine Asia featured an account of six radio addresses to the Japanesé people delivered by a sometime professor of geography in the Imperial University of Tokio, Haushofer is a pale and harmless ghost by comparison. Lately in America, several writers have plunged headlong into the field of geopolitics. A very remarkable work in this field is the late Nicholas Spykman’s United States Strategy and World Politics. This is a very useful work, inasmuch as it attempts to bring the United States citizen around to see something of the place he must inevitably take in world affairs. The book caught the public imagination, and to give young Army officers an idea of what they are fighting for, they were given official instruction in geopolitics of the Nicholas Spykman brand. (continued on next page)

(continued fromi previous page) I have no time available to pursue this theme to-night. Geopolitics is not geography-it is political geography turned into the geography of power politics. The geographer as such is concerned with the study of men and things as they are: if he has any political motive it would be the hope that an enlightened people of the world could live amicably together through mutual understanding. The fundamental philosophy of geopolitics is the use of power for political ends-though these ends may not necessarily be those of Haushofer and his pupil Adolf Hitler. The World After the War Now let me wind up this address to you by getting back to Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, with whom I started:-‘He that knows not what the world is, knows not where he is himself." Who of us does really know what this world is. After the war we will have to rebuild it. All that a wider dissemination of geographic knowledge can give us is something towards better understanding of ourselves and the other peoples of the world with whom we have to live, All sorts of people will be to the fore with quick and ready remedies for our political, social and economic sickness. To me it seems there are three major things to strive for-liberty, justice and truth. If better, fuller, sounder geographic knowledge of the world and of ourselves will lead us nearer to truth, perhaps it will help us some of the way towards liberty and justice as well, All sorts of problems there are about which we will soon have to have definite opinions. The question of the autarchic state in the post-war world is likely to be one of the first. Can we shut ourselves up behind the doors of a semi-closed economy? Or will we come out in the open in a demand for a reasonably free trade world--in my opinion the only sort of post-war world that has any reasonable chance of peaceful working? By the Canberra agreement recently negotiated, our Government has claimed for us wider responsibilities in the Pacific Island zone. Are we going to send officials there to discharge the responsibilities we have assumed? If so, I suggest the need for them to be as fully informed in fundamental geography and anthropology as we can make them here. We listen to demands for a greater population after the war. Do we or those who make these demands have any clear idea as to where we are possibly to get these extra millions? Or do we clearly see what we would do with them if we had them? However, I will spare you any more questions-questions to which I would hardly venture to attempt an answer. The present war revealed in most of us an appalling ignorance of the world at large -- an ignorance even of our own country. Tucked away here in an out-of-the-way corner of the earth, we were largely a nation of ostriches. I put it to you in all seriousness that every citizen needs more and better geographic knowledge. Enlightened public opinion based on knowledge and understanding is preferable to a public opinion based on prejudice and isolation from the rest of the world. "He that kriows not what the world is, knows not where he is himself."