REDRAWING THE MAP.

Auckland Star, Volume L, Issue 111, 10 May 1919, Page 17

REDRAWING THE MAP.

WAR'S HAVOC WITH FRONTIERS REARRANGING NATIONAL BOUNDARIES. The map of the world will have to be re-drawn after the Peace Conference. Most of the changes will be made in Europe, but immense tracts of territory in Asia and Africa, not to mention large islands in the South Pacific, are to pass under rule that wa6 not theirs until Germany cast the gauntlet before the world, and therefore challenged civilisation to rearrange national boundaries everywhere on fairer and juster principles. It is an extraordinarily difficult matter, however, this of fixing the new frontiers. There lias been a great deal of declamation by the world's statesmen with regard to the principle of selfdetermination; much tnlk of our intention to arrange Europe "as far as possible, with regard to the principle of nationality and in accordance with the wishes of the people who dYvell in the various disputed areas." In other j words, the idea is for the people of one | race to live in the borders of their own country instead of being held, under the old conditions, under a yoke to which they had been obliged to submit by force majeure. Thus large portions of the provinces of Transylvania and Bessarabia, hitherto Austrian and Russian, are claimed by Rumania because their I populations are Rumanian in stock; Italy, along the same lines, is supposed to have a right to various portions of Austria and other countries: Serbia is entitled to big slices of territory where the populations are Serbs; the various peoples formerly constituting the Austro-Hungarinn empire claim their independence; Poland does the same And so on. VERY DIFFICULT WORK. But anybody who has studied the map of Europe, according to ethnographical distribution will know that the task of "drawing the line" is extraordinarily dillicult. Rumanians, Serbs, Bulgars, J Greeks, Italians, Poles, Czechs, Albanians, Slovenes, Germans, Croats, tho whole medley of races in Austro-Hun-gary and the Balkans, arc so mingled in many places that the adjustment of boundaries along racial lines is simply impossible. Moreover, such settlement, in numerous instances, even if it could be managed, would be unjust to other nations. Small States, by accident of situation, might be given the power of cutting off bigger and much 1 more important nations from the sea, or , from proper and deserved commercial , development and so forth. Thus, it . can easily be seen, the work of fixing r the boundaries of the nations, tho new r nations nnd the old ones, will be tlie . work of many years. ) CARELESSNESS CAUSES TROUBLE. , The main principle then is to bring . into one fold, under one Government, those people who wish to form a single J nation, and in doing so to endeavour to I fix boundaries which will not only be con- . i venient for the present, but have in them J the elements of stability for the future. 3' Too many wars have arisen through care- . 1 lessness or lack of foresight or inattene | tion to racial claims in the past for the I world to risk similar trouble in the J future, and we may be sure that the very ('greatest effort will be made, now that ' the world has had its most pointed objeota | lesson in the horrors of war, to have ~i frontiers fixed fairly. Some examples of how more or less (careless methods of frontier delimination * I have led to trouble may be found inlercstn I ing. In the main tnev have been con..inectcd with the geographical side of the I question, as the racial cunsidcrations !j now so dominant have not hitherto been I given due regard.

In the past some frontiers have been diawn in straight lines. The most strik ing example is that between the United States and Canada, one which has on the whole been remarkably satisfactory, although it has lively associations, especially in regard to the demarcation at the Lake Champlain end of the line, and again at the Eastern end, where the line of the Columbia River was presumed by Britain to mark the boundary, giving the State of Washington to Canada. The matter was referred to arbitration, and in this neither side got all it contended for. OTHER "INCIDENTS." Delimitations by map in regard to Africa have given rise to "incidents" when it came to the question of demarcation as in the ense of Britain and Belgium in Central Africa. The line, airily agreed upon by diplomats, proved quite impracticable for the boundary makers, who, as they proceeded with their work, discovered geographic and other factors upsetting the intentions of the treaty makers. Another arrangement, in which there had to be give and take on both sides, had to be made. And in the delimitation of the German South-West Africa boundary no heed could be taken of geographical features, because the land was not explored, and, had not the Great War interfered anil, apparently, settled the question, there would probably have been trouble over this particular specimen of the art of arranging boundaries by drawing a straight line in ignorance of geographical conditions.

History abounds in such incidents. When Russia and Norway were drawing the line west of Finland the Russians arranged to take the territory along the Tana and Tornea watershed, thinking, it would appear, that this would take them right across to the Atlantic. But it didn't- They had taken too much for granted: they were ignorant of the local geography. A MOVING BOUNDARY. That was the case, by the way. when the Governments of Russia and Britain agreed on a delimitation of their respective spheres of interest north of India ami fixed the line of the Oxus. They little knew the habits of that river, which is in one channel to-day and in another later on. A boundary which "dunno where it are," so to put it, is of no use, and it is to be hoped that in the new demarcation of boundaries in Asia—say. Armenia and Mesopotamia—the powers that Ik- will pay due heed to geographical features as well as ethnic, considerations and refrain from giving the Commissioners tasks impossible of completion and from leaving loopholes for future controversy. They may take their lesson from the incidents mentioned, and they may bear in mind the folly of making "the line of the hills" a boundary, unless they know exactly what that means. When that definition was used to define the boundary between Chili and her next neighbour a few years ago it was found in due course that if the line was taken from mountain top to mountain top it formed a sort of crazy quilt pattern, and gave to one nation territory not "within the meaning of the Act."