INTERNATIONAL SPEECH 155 



love in one's heart for the beauty of their literatures; it is quite 

 another, and a different thing, to endure years of joyless toil, ac- 

 quiring a smattering of many tongues in order to gain a mere technical 

 ability to read the facts of science internationally. What wanton 

 brain-waste is here. Scientific investigation and discovery are of no 

 nation, of no language, but to be in possession of the knowledge of 

 them, in the present crude stage of our social development, we must 

 learn a half-score of the national languages in a way that is subver- 

 sive to all mental discipline, to all culture. Either we are skated 

 over the thin ice of a " conversational course," getting our vocabulary 

 with our breath between glides, and with grammar served daintily, 

 like Nabisco wafers at a luncheon. Or we have had, let us say, the 

 good average representative " language course " in school and col- 

 lege. We have " pried over " from one language into another endless 

 imbecile sentences, involving the fact that Marie, when she shall have 

 had a lead pencil will have been happy; that Henry's uncle, who is 

 about to return from Frankfurt, desires an inkstand for his little 

 sister; or concerning the ravages committed by the red cow of the 

 good grandmother in the green garden of the rich count. We have 

 read a half dozen plays; have rendered slowly, dully, baldly, into 

 " translation English," a few hundred pages, more or less, of standard 

 prose and verse — and we have "had " French, we have "had" Ger- 

 man. How many of us must testify to the inadequacy of the average 

 " required " courses in language to give appreciation for foreign 

 literatures, while of course their utter inefficiency, so far as the direct 

 conversational use of these tongues is concerned, must be self-evident, 

 in view of the laughter-provoking absurdities in style and diction, 

 the impossible pronunciations and accents we achieve. 



In one of George du Maurier's books, two little English boys in a 

 French school are requested by the master, proud of his own English, 

 to render into its English equivalent, " je voudrais pouvoir." Trans- 

 lated " I should like to be able " by the little Englishmen, they were 

 at once corrected by the master. " ISTon, non, you do not know your 

 native tongue. It is to say, ' I vould vill to can ' " Being then told 

 to translate, " je pourrais vouloir," from the small bad boys came the 

 alert response, " I vould can to vill." 



We all know, from both literature and life, the appalling waste, 

 the tremendous throwing about of brains to little use, in much of 

 the current study of foreign languages. 



Eecognizing the difficulties involved in learning the natural 

 tongues, the minds of men have been occupied for more than two 

 hundred years with projects for an artificial language that should be 

 the means for international communication. But the thought nat- 

 urally suggests itself — why should we not make use for this purpose, of 

 some one of the already existing idioms, developing and simplifying 



