College 115 



tional theory has been that scholars should have a com- 

 mand of at least two languages other than their own. As 

 a matter of fact, most European scholars have always been 

 able to speak at least one and ordinarily two foreign lan- 

 guages. Even if their conversational ability was a bit shaky, 

 they could almost certainly read EngHsh, French, and 

 German easily and puzzle out two or three other Latin 

 languages. 



Unhappily the same cannot be said of Americans. Be- 

 fore the growth of American universities toward the end 

 of the last century, the situation was in a way better than 

 it is now. Anyone wanting to do advanced work in a 

 scholarly field or a practical art like medicine had to 

 study abroad. Furthermore, a large proportion of the 

 world's scholarship was at that time published in either 

 German or French. The result was that most American 

 scholars were in those days able to read both languages 

 and could ordinarily follow a lecture or conversation. 



As graduate training became available at home and 

 more and more work came to be published in English, 

 the incentive to learn other languages decHned and Amer- 

 ican intellectuals became more and more provincial in 

 outlook. Their attitude reminds one of the old Boston 

 lady who is alleged to have asked, "Why should I travel 

 when I am already here?" In many, perhaps most, uni- 

 versities there is still a requirement that graduate students 

 demonstrate a reading knowledge of two foreign languages 

 before obtaining the Ph.D. It must be admitted, however, 

 that in practice this requirement has been very loosely 

 administered — so loosely, in fact, that the majority of 

 graduate students today do not really have a useful ability 

 in languages other than English. 



It is true that a much higher proportion of the world's 

 scientific work than ever before is now published in Eng- 



