Lesson in Geography

For weeks before he sent naval forces to Iceland, Franklin Roosevelt tried to make up his mind whether that rocky island, a stepping stone in the sea between Greenland and Britain, properly belonged within the borders of the Western Hemisphere which the U.S. has guaranteed to protect. Characteristically, when the President decided to act, he brushed the question aside, justified his move on grounds of military necessity.

Classic definition of the Western Hemisphere was a line drawn by Pope Alexander VI. confirmed in 1494 by the Treaty of Tordesillas. The line ran from the Arctic to the Antarctic on approximately the 46th meridian, 1,475 miles west of Cape Verde. All lands discovered east of this line (including the Azores) went to Portugal; everything west of it was part of the New World which Columbus had just claimed for Spain. Iceland, by this definition, would belong to Europe. So would most of Greenland. So would a large part of Brazil.

When President Roosevelt last January called in Dr. Isaiah Bowman, 62-year-old President of Johns Hopkins University and a famed geographer, to find a definition of the Western Hemisphere. Dr. Bowman first suggested the 26th meridian, which would still leave Iceland in Europe's hemisphere. When the 26th meridian proved unsatisfactory to the President, Dr. Bowman pondered some more, obligingly came up with Explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson's mid-channel theory. According to Explorer Stefansson, the line should run midway through the "widest channel" between Europe and the Americas, would give Iceland to the Western Hemisphere.

Same day that President Roosevelt told Congress that the U.S. had moved into Iceland, the National Geographic Society gave out still another definition. The "arbitrary line" which is "generally accepted" by geographers, said the Society, is the 20th meridian, which runs squarely through Iceland, assigns Portugal's Cape Verde Islands and the Azores to the Western Hemisphere.

At his press conference next afternoon President Roosevelt smilingly turned aside a question about his definition of the Western Hemisphere. It all depended, said he, on what geographer he had consulted last. A newsman reminded him that once he had marked the border of the Western Hemisphere as a line running between Greenland and Iceland. The President chuckled: it all depended on what geographer he had consulted last.

There are some points in the Western Hemisphere, said Franklin Roosevelt, that have nothing to do with the defense of the Americas. There are some other points outside the Hemisphere that are vitally important. It is impossible, said he, to draw a line and put a buoy on it.

In short, the definition of the Western Hemisphere, as posterity would know it, would depend on what geographer history consulted last.

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