ENGLISH AS AN INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE 339 



assimilated. Greek profited at least as much as Latin by the Eoman 

 conquest of the world. After a century of union with the Empire of 

 the Tsars, the best educated inhabitants of Finland learn German rather 

 than Russian. Magyar, Czech and Polish have triumphantly asserted 

 themselves against German, once the only official language in the Haps- 

 burg dominions. After forty years of strenuous endeavor, the German 

 Empire has not shaken the hold of French culture in the essentially 

 Teutonic province of Alsace. When one hears of the incessant struggle 

 in Germany, Austria-Hungary and Eussia, caused by the attempt of 

 imposing a language on a conquered people, one can not but hope that 

 England and America will be wise and generous enough not to commit 

 the same mistake — or the same crime. 



Without any coercion, the natural superiority of a language, or of 

 the civilization which it represents, will ensure its triumph. Thus 

 Cornish disappeared and Welsh is receding before English; thus, for a 

 time, and without any political connection between the two countries, 

 Rumanian was entirely overshadowed by French. By a process of nat- 

 ural selection, some languages remain provincial, like Basque or Breton ; 

 some become national, like Hungarian ; and a few conquer international 

 status. Among these, by a similar process, one will forge ahead of all 

 others and become alone international : such is the destiny claimed for 

 English. 



All this is theory: do facts point the same way? It seems that 

 every year we have more claimants instead of fewer to national and 

 international rank. A century ago, French was alone in the field. At 

 present, not only French, German and English, but Italian enjoys in all 

 international activities a sort of official recognition. And how long will 

 Spanish and Russian be content to lag behind ? The distinction made 

 by H. G. Wells between the three " agglomerative " languages, French, 

 English and German, and all the rest, is by no means so clear as he 

 would have us believe. There is a long way between English and 

 Catalonian, for instance: but all the links of a continuous chain could 

 be found. Can we consider as a minor language Italian, with its mag- 

 nificent literature, past and present, its active scholarship, its intrinsic 

 beauty, its faith in its own destiny? 1 Or Russian, or Spanish, with 

 their vast numbers, their great achievements, their boundless possibili- 

 ties? The strong plea of the Brazilian delegate at the Hague Confer- 

 ence against the notion of secondary powers not entitled to all the 

 honors and privileges enjoyed by a few applies with even greater force 

 to the notion of secondary languages. Language has become such a 

 symbol of racial patriotism that the balance of power is preserved as 

 jealously in the linguistic domain as in the political. 



1 Cf . the activity of the Dante Alighieri Society for the spread of the 

 Italian language. 



