In the town of Lille, France, Esperanto has been taught in the high schools for at least nine years; about 1,500 pupils benefiting yearly from this. The same is true of Rio de Janeiro, in Brasil.
In conclusion, I wish to register my opinion as an unbiased student of the whole movement for the adoption of an international language that Esperanto has nothing to fear from any rival scheme—present, past, or future.
Of upward of 150 different projects that have seen the light since the seventeenth century, not one was born with a life worth saving but Esperanto; not one has ever attained one-hundredth part the power and vogue and vitality that Esperanto has achieved.
One only of all these schemes has ever come prominently before the public before Esperanto came into the field, Volapük, and this failed of its own defects.
One only among some 20 or 30 imitations of Esperanto, namely, Ido, succeeded for a time in creating a diversion in the Esperanto camp. If Volapük died of its defects, it is permissible to say that Ido never lived on account of its numerous authors' everlasting chase after theoretical perfection, each one having a different opinion—and changing the same with every wind—as to what constitutes perfection in every one of a thousand features of a human language. Accordingly, the Idoists have altered their mock Esperanto a hundred times in six years, so that no one has been able to keep track of the changes, and the adherents of the secession themselves have never been able to learn, speak, and use the language.
During these six years Esperanto has succeeded in establishing itself and getting a firm hold in every civilized country from China to Peru and from Greenland to Zanzibar, because it is a live and growing language, perfect in so far that it is endowed from the start with all the power of evolution without the need of any internal changes in its wonderfully simple structure.
Here are a few quotations from great thinkers as to the need for an auxiliary language:
The diversity of languages is fatal for genius and progress. If there were a universal language, we should save a third of life. (Leibnitz.)
The interrelationships of the peoples are so great that they most certainly need a universal language. (Montesquieu.)
One of the greatest torments of life is the diversity of language. (Voltaire.)