across the Pacific, exporting European and American industrial and
commercial techniques to China, as formerly to Japan? Will Oriental
fertility, working with the latest Occidental technology, bring the decline of
the West?
The development of the airplane will again alter the map of civilization.
Trade routes will follow less and less the rivers and seas; men and goods
will be flown more and more directly to their goal. Countries like England
and France will lose the commercial advantage of abundant coast lines
conveniently indented; countries like Russia, China, and Brazil, which were
hampered by the excess of their land mass over their coasts, will cancel part
of that handicap by-taking to the air. Coastal cities will derive less of their
wealth from the clumsy business of transferring goods from ship to train or
from train to ship. When sea power finally gives place to air power in
transport and war, we shall have seen one of the basic revolutions in
history.
The influence of geographic factors diminishes as technology grows. The
haracter and contour of a terrain may offer opportunities for agriculture,
mining, or trade, but only the imagination and initiative of leaders, and the
hardy industry of followers, can transform the possibilities into fact; and
only a similar combination (as in Israel today) can make a culture take form
over a thousand natural obstacles. Man, not the earth, makes civilization.
