its area more effective for the support of the people, the French of
Richelieu's time, except those from certain districts, took to the sea,
not by national impulse as did the English and Dutch, but rather under
the spur of government initiative. They therefore achieved far less in
maritime trade and colonization.[15] In ancient Palestine, a long
stretch of coast, poorly equipped with harbors but accessible to the
rich Mediterranean trade, failed to offset the attraction of the gardens
and orchards of the Jezreel Valley and the pastures of the Judean hills,
or to overcome the land-born predilections and aptitudes of the
desert-bred Jews. Similarly, the river-fringed peninsulas of Virginia
and Maryland, opening wide their doors to the incoming sea, were
powerless, nevertheless, to draw the settlers away from the riotous
productiveness of the wide tidewater plains. Here again the geographic
force of the land outweighed that of the sea and became the dominant
factor in directing the activities of the inhabitants.

The two antagonistic geographic forces may be both of the land, one born
of a country's topography, the other of its location. Switzerland's
history has for centuries shown the conflict of two political policies,
one a policy of cantonal and communal independence, which has sprung
from the division of that mountainous country into segregated districts,
and the other one of political centralization, dictated by the necessity
for coöperation to meet the dangers of Switzerland's central location
mid a circle of larger and stronger neighbors. Local geographic
conditions within the Swiss territory fixed the national ideal as a
league of "sovereign cantons," to use the term of their constitution,
enjoying a maximum of individual rights and privileges, and tolerating a
minimum of interference from the central authority. Here was physical
dismemberment coupled with mutual political repulsion. But a location at
the meeting place of French, German, Austrian and Italian frontiers laid