To sum up: the ignorance of contemporary history and fact displayed in the suggestion of giving the preference to any national language is only equalled by its futility, for it is futile, to put forward a scheme that has no chance of even being discussed internationally as a matter of practical politics.
A proof is that precisely the same objection to an auxiliary language is raised in France—namely, that it is unpatriotic, because it would displace French from that proud position.
The above remarks will be wholly misunderstood if they are taken to imply any spirit of Little Englandism on the part of the writer. On the contrary, he is ardently convinced of the mighty rôle that will be played among the nations by the British Empire, and has had much good reason in going to and fro in the world to ponder on its unique achievement in the past. When fully organized on some terms of partnership as demanded by the growth of the Colonies, it will go even farther in the future. But all this has nothing to do with an international language. Howsoever mighty, the British Empire will not swallow up the earth—at any rate, not in our time. And till it does, it is not practical politics to expect other peoples to recognize English as the international language as between themselves.
There are, in fact, two quite separate questions:
(1) Supposing it is possible for any national language to become the international one, which has the best claims?
(2) Is it possible for any national language to be adopted as the international one?
To question (1) the answer undoubtedly is "English." It is already the language of the sea, and to a large extent the medium for transacting business between Europeans and Asiatic races, or
between the Asiatic races themselves.1 Moreover, except for its pronunciation and spelling, it has intrinsically the best claim, as being the furthest advanced along the common line of development of Aryan language.2 But the discussion of this question has no more than an academic interest, because the answer to question (2) is, for political reasons, in the negative.
1Another argument is that based on the comparative numbers of people who speak the principal European languages as their mother-tongue. No accurate statistics exist, but an interesting estimate is quoted by Couturat and Leau (Hist. de la langue universelle), which puts English first with about 120,000,000, followed at a distance of 30,000,000 or 40,000,000 by Russian.
2This is explained in [Part III., chap. i.], q.v.