International Language, Past, Present & Future / With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar

by Walter John Clark

England (see below); but if the language is anywhere adopted universally in government schools, it will certainly be first in France. (For an account of the present state of this question, which is at present before the French Permanent Educational Commission, see [Part I., chap. vi.]). Dr. Zamenhof has been decorated by the French Government, and Esperanto is already taught in many French schools. For purposes of education France is divided into districts, called ressorts d'Académie, within each of which there is a complete educational ladder from the primary schools to the university which is the culmination of each. The official head of an important district is Rector Boirac, head of the Dijon University. He is one of the most distinguished of the Esperantists, and is the leading spirit at the congresses and on the Lingva Komitato. He has done much for Esperanto in the schools of his district, and under the guidance of men of his calibre Esperanto is making serious progress in France. (For lists of university professors favourable to an international language, see [Part I., chap. vi.]).

In Germany one of the foremost men of science of his time, Prof. Ostwald, of Leipzig, is an ardent advocate of the international language. He recently was lent for a time to Harvard University, U.S.A., and while there gave a great impetus to the study of Esperanto. He also spoke in its favour at Aberdeen last year, on the occasion of the opening of the new University buildings.

Apropos of the interchange between different countries of professors and other teachers, which has to some extent been already tried between America and Germany, it is curious to note the attitude of Prof. Hermann Diels, Rector of the Berlin University. He is a great supporter of the extension of this interchange, which also has the approbation of the Kaiser, who attended formally the inaugural lecture of one of the American professors, to mark his approbation. Prof. Diels commented on the fact that diversity of language was a grave obstacle; but though he seems before to have been a champion of popularized

Latin, he now declares himself strongly against any artificial language,¹ and advocates the use of English, French, and German. This is a modified form of the old Max Müller proposal, that all serious scientific work should be published in one of six languages. It does not seem a very convincing attitude to take up, because it ignores the facts: (1) that the actual trend of the world is the other way—towards inclusion of fresh national languages among the Kultursprachen, not towards accentuation of the predominance of these three; (2) that the increase of specialization and new studies at universities is leaving less and less time for mastering several difficult languages merely as means to other branches of study. Why should everybody have to learn English, French, and German?

¹Herr Diels quaintly finds that Esperanto has only one gender—the feminine! Surely an ultra-Shavian obsession of femininity. It is perhaps some distinction to out-Shaw Bernard Shaw in any line.

For the rest, Esperanto is now beginning to take hold in Germany. The Germans have, as a general rule, open minds for this kind of problem, and are trained to take objective views in linguistic matters on the scientific merits of the case. The reason why they have been somewhat backward hitherto in the Esperanto movement is no doubt their disappointment at the failure of Volapük, which they had done much to promote. But now that, in spite of this special drawback, the first steps have been made, and clubs and papers are beginning to spring up again, everything points to powerful co-operation from Germany in the future.

In Switzerland progress has been enormous since the Geneva Congress of 1906. Many clubs and classes are already formed or in process of formation, and university men are supporting the movement. In one respect the Swiss are now in the van of the Esperantist world: they have just started a newspaper, Esperanto, the prospectus of which declares that it will no longer treat the language as an end in itself, or make propaganda; it will run on the lines of an ordinary weekly, merely using

Esperanto as a means, inasmuch as it is the language of the paper.

The well-known Swiss veteran philosopher Ernst Naville wrote to the Geneva Congress that for thirty years he had regarded the introduction of an international language as a necessity, owing to the advance of civilization, and the day of realization of this object would be one of the greatest dates of history.

It is impossible to go through all the countries of Europe in detail. It is probable that the greatest numbers of Esperantists are still to be found among the Slav peoples. The language first took root in their midst, and was spread far and wide by a distinguished group of Slav writers.