'File 379/1906 Railways: Aden; railway construction in Aden hinterland; Aden-Lahej Railway' [‎4r] (12/308)

MILITARY GEOGRAPHY.
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Imperial Military Geography. By J.
Fitzgeral© Lee. (Clowes. I2s.6d.net.',
The previous edition of this book, pub
lished in 1908, contained forecasts, based upon
considerations of military geography, of
some of the most important operations of the
Great War which proved to be so accurate as
to cause some readers to imagine that the
book had been issued after the events. Many
of these passages have been preserved in the
present edition, but othenvise the book has
been re-written in the light of the Peace
Treaties. Nor does the author confine him
self to what might be termed the dry bones
of the subject—-geography often contents
itself with defining the “ where ” of a place,
the military geographer goes further and
sometimes assigns the “ wherefore ” as well.
We find, too, that he sometimes steps aside
to point a moral or explain a situation. Thus
we are warned of the effect of the slaughter of
white men during the war upon the balance
of power as between the now dominant white
and his coloured subjects and neighbours;
or we learn how the commercial development
of Aden has been arrested, partly by its
unhappy political status as the Cinderella of
India, partly owing to Lord Morley's action
in listening to the interested advice of a small
clique of local merchants. Sometimes thei
author rather lets his feelings run away with
him, but these digressions only serve to
season an otherwise carefully prepared dish. ;
There are, however, one or two slips.
Others of the new Baltic States besides
Finland have a distinct nationality, and
language, of their own ; Tabriz is not, and
has not been, the capital of the Republic ot
Azerbaijan, but is still that of the Persian
province of Azerbaijan ; it was Nasr ed Din
Shah, and not his son Muzaffar-ed-Din Shah,
who was assassinated in 1896 ; and the
experiences of the late war tend to modify the
statement made on page 9 about the swamp
defences of the coast of what used to bo
Turkey in Europe.
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