Evening star., 1939-10-01
RussO>G German Entente Follows
Path Exposed by 'Geopoitician'
Idea of Briton, Sir Halford Mackinder, Traced to
Ears of Hitler After Lying Dormant
for a Generation
By Richard II. Stokes.

plishment of an entente between the
Third Reich and Soviet Russia, there
has begun to swim into public ken a
new, strange and monstrous vocable,
which seems destined to become gen.
orally current. 1t is "geopolitics," which
signifies policy based on geography-not
the geography Of our school books, with
the peoples neatly parceled of into
blocks of various colors, but one which
sweeps aside pan-made boundaries and
thinks in terms of watersheds, river
basins, mountain barriers and zones Of
fertility.
The word is of German coinage, but
the design was English. Preposterous
as the notion may appear, it is fascinat-
ing to speculate that Joseph Stain and
Adolf Hitler might never have struck
hands across the corpse of Poland If an
Oxford professor, in 1904, had not read
before the Royal Geographical Society
paper entitled THE Pivot of History
This momentous don, still active at the
age of 78, is the Right Hon. Sir Halford
John Mackinder, who formerly occupied
the chair of geography at Oxford Uni
versity, became leading spirit of Brit
ish imperialism and served in Parliament
IL years as member of the Unionist, or
Tory, party. His other claims to re-
nown are that he led an expedition
which made the first ascent of Mount
Kenya, in Africa, during 1899, and that
he was the earliest to give vogue to the
term man power" as implying not only
fighting strength but industrial produc-
tivity.
Pens Axioms of the Science.
While the peace conference was de-
iberating at Versailles in 1919 Sir Hal
ford decided to expand into a book the
notions he had sketched in his essay of
Is years before. The result was slender
volume with the significant title, Demo-
cratic Ideals and Reality" 1t expressed
hope that when our statesmen are in
conversation with the defeated enemy,
some airy cherub would whisper to them
!. from time to time" the following three
terse and cryptic oracles which may be
regarded as the Euclidean axioms of
geopolitical science:
Who rules East Europe commands the
heartland.
Who rules the heartland commands
the world-island
Who rules the world-island COM
mands the world.
Translated into speech less Delphic,
the authors meaning was that union
of German genius for organization with
Russian resources of manpower, food
stuffs and minerals would constitute the
most deadly threat history has ever
known to the liberties of the entire
globe, including North and South Amer
lea.
Such a combination of 2500O0,O00
souls, he argued, eventually would be
capable of outbuilding and outmanning
the aggregate sea power of Great Brit
ain and the United States. With con-
troll of the Baltic and Black Seas, the
huge area would be inaccessible to di-s
rect attack from the sea, and would pos
cess internal resources with which to
defy blockade. Worst of all, the alliance
would be in position to outflank British
sea power and destroy its bases from
the rear by means of land attacks on
Western Europe. India and China; and
could even drive through Arabia into
Africa south of the Sahara.
Another War Cataract"
Sir Halford recalled there has been a
world war every hundred years for the
last four centuries, and that the con-
fict of 1914-1918 was merely another
cataract in the stream of history" He
pointed out that for once the democra-
cies, with 100000 soldiers in the field,
were efficiently armed and that they were
completely victorious. Posterity will
think meanly OF our wisdom, he pro-
r1ounced, unless we find it possible so to
grade the streambed of future history
that there shall be no more cataracts."
He urged the vital necessity of basing
the new world order not upon demo-
cratic sentimentalities, but upon the
hard geographical facts underlying his
tory. The chief lesson to be drawn from
these, in his opinion, was the mortal
necessity of preventing German and
Russia from joining forces. They had
lost the war because they fought on op-
posite sides, but through that common
loss might draw the obvious moral and
unite. AS beginning, he advanced the
daring and drastic project of exchang-
Ing in body the German population
OF East Prussia and Danzig with the
Polish population of West Prussia, later
the Corridor of unhappy memory. His
main objective was to destroy the bridge
between the Soviet Union and Germany
afforded by the continued existence of
East Prussia
There is no evidence that these ad-
monitions ever reached the ears of
Wilson, Lloyd George and Clemenceau.
But their significance was instantly
grasped by German, now 70 years old,
named Karl E. N. Haushofer himself
geographer, who had travelled in China
and India, and been attached for sew
eral years to the Japanese Army. He en-
tered the World War as major of field
artillery, and emerged as a major gen.
eral, attached to the royal Bavarian
general staff. Then he established an
Institute for Geopolitics at Munich, and
In one of the first issues of its journal
recommended Sir Halfords book as
valuable medicine, which should not be
refused merely because it was concocted
by an enemy.
Gains Ear of Hitler.
Thanks to one of the accidents which
sometimes determine the course of his