These two tongues must inevitably come into keen conflict; they will perhaps fight their battle for the linguistic conquest of Europe, and perhaps of the world, in a great urban region that will arise about the Rhine. Politically this region lies now in six independent States, but economically it must become one in the next fifty years. It will almost certainly be the greatest urban region in all the world except that which will arise in the eastern States of North America, and that which may arise somewhere about Hankow. It will stretch from Lille to Kiel, it will drive extensions along the Rhine valley into Switzerland, and fling an arm along the Moldau to Prague, it will be the industrial capital of the old world. Paris will be its West End, and it will stretch a spider's web of railways and great roads of the new sort over the whole continent. Even when the coal-field industries of the plain give place to the industrial application of mountain-born electricity, this great city region will remain, I believe, in its present position at the seaport end of the great plain of the Old World. Considerations of transit will keep it where it has grown, and electricity will be brought to it in mighty cables from the torrents of the central European mountain mass. Its westward port may be Bordeaux or Milford Haven, or even some port in the south-west of Ireland—unless, which is very unlikely, the velocity of secure sea-travel can be increased beyond that of land locomotion. I do not see how this great region is to unify itself without some linguistic compromise—the Germanization of the French-speaking peoples by force is too ridiculous a suggestion to entertain. Almost inevitably with travel, with transport communications, with every condition of human convenience insisting upon it, formally or informally a bi-lingual compromise will come into operation, and to my mind at least the chances seem even that French will emerge on the upper hand. Unless, indeed, that great renascence of the English-speaking peoples should, after all, so overwhelmingly occur as to force this European city to be tri-lingual, and prepare the way by which the whole world may at last speak together in one tongue.
These are the aggregating tongues. I do not think that any other tongues than these are quite likely to hold their own in the coming time. Italian may flourish in the city of the Po valley, but only with French beside it. Spanish and Russian are mighty languages, but without a reading public how can they prevail, and what prospect of a reading public has either? They are, I believe, already judged. By a.d. 2000 all these languages will be tending more and more to be the second tongues of bi-lingual communities, with French, or English, or less probably German winning the upper hand.
But when one turns to China there are the strangest possibilities. It is in Eastern Asia alone that there seems to be any possibility of a synthesis sufficiently great to maintain itself, arising outside of, and independently of, the interlocked system of mechanically sustained societies that is developing out of mediæval Christendom. Throughout Eastern Asia there is still, no doubt, a vast wilderness of languages, but over them all rides the Chinese writing. And very strong—strong enough to be very gravely considered—is the possibility of that writing taking up an orthodox association of sounds, and becoming a world speech. The Japanese written language, the language of Japanese literature, tends to assimilate itself to Chinese, and fresh Chinese words and expressions are continually taking root in Japan. The Japanese are a people quite abnormal and incalculable, with a touch of romance, a conception of honour, a quality of imagination, and a clearness of intelligence that renders possible for them things inconceivable of any other existing nation. I may be the slave of perspective effects, but when I turn my mind from the pettifogging muddle of the English House of Commons, for example, that magnified vestry that is so proud of itself as a club—when I turn from that to this race of brave and smiling people, abruptly destiny begins drawing with a bolder hand. Suppose the Japanese were to make up their minds to accelerate whatever process of synthesis were possible in China! Suppose, after all, I am not the victim of atmospheric refraction, and they are, indeed, as gallant and bold and intelligent as my baseless conception of them would have them be! They would almost certainly find co-operative elements among the educated Chinese.... But this is no doubt the lesser probability. In front and rear of China the English language stands. It has the start of all other languages—the mechanical advantage—the position. And if only we, who think and write and translate and print and put forth, could make it worth the world's having!
FOOTNOTES:
[44] Under the intoxication of the Keltic Renascence the most diverse sorts of human beings have foregathered and met face to face, and been photographed Pan-Keltically, and have no doubt gloated over these collective photographs, without any of them realizing, it seems, what a miscellaneous thing the Keltic race must be. There is nothing that may or may not be a Kelt, and I know, for example, professional Kelts who are, so far as face, manners, accents, morals, and ideals go, indistinguishable from other people who are, I am told, indisputably Assyroid Jews.
[45] Is War Now Impossible? and see also footnote, p. 210.
[46] It is entirely for their wealth that brewers have been ennobled in England, never because of their services as captains of a great industry. Indeed, these services have been typically poor. While these men were earning their peerages by the sort of proceedings that do secure men peerages under the British Crown, the German brewers were developing the art and science of brewing with remarkable energy and success. The Germans and Bohemians can now make light beers that the English brewers cannot even imitate; they are exporting beer to England in steadily increasing volume.