MUDDLED MAPS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXII, Issue 19443, 31 October 1925, Page 17 (Supplement)

MUDDLED MAPS

SOME HISTORICAL ERROR The statement in a British Colonial Office report that “seemingly educated persons could not place Cyprus, on the map within 1000 miles,” recalls some offiical errors of more consequence. An eighteenth century Foreign Minister handed Chandernftgore over to France in the belief th tit it was a West Indian island, as a result of which error the French colony of Chandernagore still exists in India, only twenty miles from Calcutta. A few years ago the President of the Royal Geographical Society prevented U. territorial arrangement in Africa, under which Franco benefited at the expense of Britain, by pointing out to the Foreign Office that it was based on measurements from the meridian of Paris, instead of that of Greenwich, as the British delegates assumed.