"He say, 'Again, mon friend ees wrong! O-u-g-h is "up," In hiccough,' Zen I cry, 'No more, You make my throat feel rough,'
"'Non! non!' he cry, 'you are not right— O-u-g-h is "uff."' I say, 'I try to speak your words, I can't prononz zem though,'
"'In time you'll learn, but now you're wrong, O-u-g-h is "owe."' 'I'll try no more. I sall go mad, I'll drown me in ze lough!'
"'But ere you drown yourself,' said he, 'O-u-g-h is "ock."' He taught no more! I held him fast, And killed him wiz a rough!"
[241] It is interesting to remember that at one period in European history, French seemed likely to absorb English, and thus to acquire, in addition to its own motor force, all the motor force which now lies behind English. When the Normans—a vigorous people of Scandinavian origin, speaking a Romance tongue, and therefore well fitted to accomplish a harmonizing task of this kind—occupied both sides of the English Channel, it seemed probable that they would dominate the speech of England as well as of France. "At that time," says Méray (La Vie aux Temps des Cours d'Amour, p. 367), who puts forward this view, "the people of the two coasts of the Channel were closer in customs and in speech than were for a long time the French on the opposite banks of the Loire.... The influential part of the English nation and all the people of its southern regions spoke the Romance of the north of France. In the Crusades the Knights of the two peoples often mixed, and were greeted as Franks wherever their adventurous spirit led them. If Edward III, with the object of envenoming an antagonism which served his own ends, had not broken this link of language, the two peoples would perhaps have been united to-day in the same efforts of progress and of liberty.... Of what a fine instrument of culture and of progress has not that fatal decree of Edward III deprived civilization!"
[242] I was at one time (Progressive Review, April, 1897) inclined to think that the adoption of both English and French, as joint auxiliary international languages—the first for writing and the second for speaking—might solve the problem. I have since recognized that such a solution, however advantageous it might be for human culture, would present many difficulties, and is quite impracticable.
[243] I may refer to three able papers which have appeared in recent years in the Popular Science Monthly: Anna Monsch Roberts, "The Problem of International Speech" (February, 1908); Ivy Kellerman, "The Necessity for an International Language," (September, 1909); Albert Léon Guérard, "English as an International Language" (October, 1911). All these writers reject as impracticable the adoption of either English or French as the auxiliary international language, and view with more favour the adoption of an artificial language such as Esperanto.
[244] A.M. Roberts, op. cit.
[245] It should be added, however, that the auxiliary language need not be used as a medium for literary art, and it is a mistake, as Pfaundler points out, to translate poems into such a language.
[246] See International Language and Science, 1910, by Couturat, Jespersen, Lorenz, Ostwald, Pfaundler, and Donnan, five professors living in five different countries.