MAPPING THE EMPIRE

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3827, 30 October 1936, Page 2

MAPPING THE EMPIRE

A JOB FOR THE GEOGRAPHERS. Brigadier H. S. L. Winterbotliam, who until last year was Director-Gen-eral of the British Ordnance Survey, took as the subject of his presidential address to the geography section of the annual meeting of the British Association, “Mapping of the Colonial Empire,” and submitted that lack of maps, or unorganised and piecemeal mapping, caused a heavy financial burden to fall on the whole community, For over a century, Brigadier Winterbotham said, we had had reason to be proud of the mapping of the British Isles; the survey of India had had an extraordinarily fine record, and for a period of 20 years or so we tackled the mapping of Africa, largely to illustrate its partition, with zeal. Then came the war, and since that time survey departments had shared in a neglect similar to that of the fighting services. In England itself the reason for this neglect was curiously difficult to find. The primary purposes of maps were to help th/- work and the play of the nation as a whole, but no revision of the plans showed the railway system of the Kentist coalfields, or records of the growth of Scunthorpe. Up and down the land innumerable interests had had to map themselves and pay double for it. No revision of the maps was complete in showing the full effects of the road programme. On what maps might we study the growth of industrialism of the south or look for a record of the expansion of Birmingham? The Ordnance Survey, tucked away in a onetime asylum in Southampton, kept on doing its best, and its difficulties were at last being considered. None the less, all British geographers had a duty in this matter. We ought to see that our house was kept in order, and that the staff of the Ordnance Survey was not halved just when the changes of development were doubled. We must have the maps, not only for what they showed but for what they could be made to show. Against the black background of map detail any subject could be illustrated in colour. NEED OF CO-OPERATION. It could be taken as proved. Brigadier Winterbotham said, that we need not hope for topography from the existing staffs of the Colonial Survey Departments. They were not in sufficient numbers, and the value of their of their education and training implied a salary higher than should be paid for the work. From 1930 to 1913 however, the topographical mapping was done by parties of Royal Engineers, and it could be done equally well in that way now. The War Office wanted the training, the colonies wanted the mapping, and Africa was still with us. One of the most obvious jobs was to revise the maps made in the pre-war period. They must hope that an equitable bargain would soon be struck. Although the advantages of a topographical survey were difficult to bring home to the public and to the administration, both seemed content to pay large sums for surveys disguised under other budgets. Almost every colony had authorised special surveys for railways, roads, water projects, draining schemes, and the like. These special surveys would in large measure be avoided by good mapping, and they were unpublished and played no part in the general development. Mapping, the speaker said in conclusion, was one of the vitamins necessary to the growth of the body politic, and it was for geographers to forward this matter. They knew that they were failing, not only to secure tne maps on which they themselves might study, analyse and suggest, but they were also failing their • friends the geoligists, airmen, settlers, business men and the people themselves. Never for a century had we treated our geographical duties so lightly.