WHAT IS THE SIZE OF OUR EMPIRE?

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20269, 30 November 1927, Page 3

WHAT IS THE SIZE OF OUR EMPIRE?

HOW REFERENCE BOOKS DISAGREE. How large is the British Empire? Seemingly even experts cannot agree, for it is rarely that two reference books give the same area (says a writer in the New York Times). , The problem does not seem difficult to solve. Official figures exist for each part of the Empire, arrived at, presumably, by careful geographical surveys. To add up the total area of the Empire, therefore, connotes no insuperable rnathematical task, even for the arithmetically distrait. Yet the results are never the same. Take the area of the British Isles (excluding Ireland), for example. The Statesman’s Year Book, which ought to know, gives it at 89,041 square miles, but Whitaker’s Almanack, which may be splitting hairs. 'insists, it is six miles larger, and six square miles of land is worth a lot of money, even to careless cartographers. However, in this case the World Almanac (without a k) corroborates the British Almanack (with a k). The case of India is far more serious. The Statesman’s Year Book puts the area of British India provinces at 1,805,332 square miles, an exactitude that is backed by the World Almanac. But Whitaker s Almanack, with magnificent largesse in a very rough guess, declares the area is 1.900.000 square miles —as if the odd 94,668 square miles were a mere drop in the bucket. That is the more remarkable in.that the difference is larger than the British Isles, again omitting Ireland—another apparent example of British insularity. The formula for arriving at a precise estimate of the area of the entire Empire would appear to be as follows: —Take any British reference book, and, without bothering to check lists against each other, compare figures with those given in the -World Almanac. If any set of figures agree —and figures sometimes do — it is obvious that there has been collusion and that, therefore, any other set of figures, chosen at random, is the more t- he trusted. The divergence of estimates for the area of the whole British Empire is complete. Nobody knows how large it is. The London Times Atlas proves by pretty multicoloured diagrams that its area is 13.730.000 square miles. The Statesman s Year Book puts it more moderately, and with seeming accuracy, at 13,355,426 square miles (yards and feet omitted). Whitaker’s Almanack makes the sweeping assertion that it is 13,900,782 square miles large, and the World Almanac, taking an independent stand, declares its area is 13,370,826 square miles. It is pointed out that unless better track of the Empire is kept somebody may one day steal a few thousand square miles and never be caught.