INTERNATIONAL SPEECH 157 



British matron, who, on being accosted in southern France by the 

 phrase, " You foreigners," replied : " No, you are ' foreigners,' we are 

 English." To your true, insular, middle-class Englishman, all the 

 rest of the world, with patronizing exception of the Americans, is com- 

 posed of " foreigners," speaking various absurd jargons, wholly im- 

 possible to understand, but really quite unimportant after all. 



Your American, knowing in his bones that he is a hopeless hash of 

 Irish, German, Scandinavian and Hebrew, with garnishings, perhaps, 

 of "Anglo-Saxon," — whatever that may be or ever was — is yet no whit 

 less provincial in his noisy assertion of the manifest destiny of the lan- 

 guage which he has learned to speak in a way, and with various brogues 

 and accents. To the language slogan of the English, he joins perforce the 

 American Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, both of 

 which are to " follow the flag " — at more or less discreet distance in 

 their more than Roman triumphal progress over the lands of the 

 hitherto unappropriated peoples waiting to be discovered and utilized. 

 If there be such a thing as an Anglo-Saxon idea, upon which England 

 and America are in perfect spiritual accord, it is that all the rest of 

 the unexploited races of the globe should be put at once into Derby 

 hats and trousers, made by the Israelites of London, ISTew York and 

 Chicago, to buy which, satisfactorily and abundantly, the prospective 

 purchasers must, of course, be made to learn " the language of Shake- 

 speare." 



The American, who is also an idealist and under illusions, would 

 graft on the suffrage. " Buy our goods, wear our clothes, talk Eng- 

 lish and vote — for us," is the good orthodox, Anglo-American receipt 

 for civilization. 



Suppose, however, we drop national prejudices for awhile, and 

 look at our language through other eyes. 



Modern English is, as we know, a magnificent composite, possessing 

 the richest, most varied, most expressive vocabulary imaginable. As 

 fully heir of the polished classical tongues through the Norman 

 French as of the homely and rugged Teutonic stocks through the 

 Saxon, our English language certainly offers us a wealth of words 

 without compare among the civilized tongues of to-day. Add to this 

 a minimum of grammar, an absolute simplicity, flexibility and mobility 

 of structure, and why should English be other than the best possible 

 international form of speech? 



What then are the deterrent factors which operate to hinder and 

 check the spread of English ? First and foremost, our absurd, impossible 

 and chaotic spelling. To language students, of course, the evolution 

 of our orthography is clearly traceable; but to the plain man of other 

 nations, who has not grown up in English from King Alfred, nothing 

 seems more witless, more grotesque,, lawless and incomprehensible 

 than our spelling, and its utter divorce from pronunciation. 



