Note 1109 — Chapter XIV · —Plains, Steppes And Deserts

Though the desert and steppe have bred conquerors, they are the last parts of the earth's surface to yield to conquest from without. The untameable spirit of freedom in the shepherd tribes finds an ally against aggression in the trackless sands, meager water and food supply of their wilderness. Pursuit of the retreating tribesmen is dangerous and often futile. They need only to burn off the pasture and fill up or pollute the water-holes to cripple the transportation and commissariat of the invading army. This is the way the Damaras have fought the German subjugation of Southwest Africa.1109 Moreover, the paucity of economic and political possibilities in deserts and grasslands discourages conquest. Conquest pays only where it is a police measure to check depredations on the bordering agricultural lands, or where such barren areas are transit lands to a desirable territory beyond. It is chiefly the "Gates of Herat" and the lure of India which have drawn Russian dominion across the scorched plains of Turkestan. France has assumed the big task of controlling the Sahara to secure a safe passway between French Tunisia and the rich Niger basin of the French Sudan. The recent British-Egyptian expansion southward across the Nubian steppes had for its objective the better watered districts of the upper Nile above Khartum. This desert advance is essentially a latter day phenomenon, the outcome of modern territorial standards; it is attended or secured by the railroad. To this fact the projected Trans-Saharan line is the strongest witness.