ON AN INTERNATIONAL AUXILIARY LANGUAGE. 397 
fundamentals of their language at the present stage. They consider that the strength 
of their position lies in its stability, but they possess machinery by which any strongly 
desired reform that may be proposed can be carefully tested and experimented on, 
and, in due course, if justified, regularised by competent authority. 
ConcLusion.—The ‘ dead-language’ and the ‘national-language’ solutions are 
alike inadmissible. For the rest, though various schemes for an ‘ artificial’ language 
(mostly plagiaries of Esperanto) exist on paper, in the field of practice Esperanto 
stands alone. Unlike them, Esperanto is not an untried scheme to be experimented 
with and altered at pleasure ad infinitum, but a living language, which has stood 
triumphantly every possible practical test for 33 years. It is the only language 
which fulfils the conditions, and the more it is investigated, the stronger its claims 
are seen to be. 
(b) IDO. 
Advantages of Ido over Latin.—Ido can be learnt: effectively even by the ‘ man- 
in-the-street ’ within three months. This is not the case with Latin. Most University 
graduates, who may be presumed to be Latin scholars, have never really effectively 
learnt Latin, even after years of study, otherwise Latin would be the language used at 
the many scientific congresses which meet from time to time, most of the delegates 
being graduates of their national Universities. 
The impossibility of resuscitating a difficult dead language has thus been practically 
demonstrated. 
An auxiliary language will not be a universal auxiliary language unless, like Ido, 
it is sufficiently simple to be learnt universally with as much ease as, for instance, 
phonography is learnt by people of very mediocre intelligence. 
Advantages of Ido over English.—¥English-speaking people would all undoubtedly 
prefer English to be the universal auxiliary language. 
Foreign-speaking people will object to such use of English (a) on political grounds, 
(6) because to acquire an effective use of English would require several years of study 
instead of the short time required to learn Ido. 
While English is spoken by more people than French, French is already more used 
than English as a common language among people speaking different mother tongues. 
In deciding upon a universal auxiliary language, one has to consider its acceptability 
to the great majority of mankind who do not speak English and who can save time by 
learning Ido instead of English, and feel that they have not conferred upon English- 
speaking people an undue political or business advantage to their own possible 
detriment. 
Advantages of Ido over Hsperanto.—Esperanto and Ido are stages in the development 
of the same idea. Ido is the later and more perfect stage. Esperanto is the invention 
of one man. Ido is. Esperanto simplified and rendered scientific by improvements 
which have been made in it by international philologists working through a central 
body. 
Ido has purged from the vocabulary of Esperanto all the words which were arbitrarily 
invented by the founder of Esperanto. The principle upon which the vocabulary of 
Ido is based is that of the maximum internationality. Each word has been devised 
from what can be found of common in words having an identical meaning in the 
existing natural languages. Practically every word selected is common in some 
slightly modified form to several European languages. Ido has not found it necessary 
to introduce a great number of arbitrarily invented words, such as are found in 
Esperanto. The Ido vocabulary is easier to learn and easier to use. 
Ido, unlike Esperanto, has no accented letters, so that for printers to print, or 
typists to type, no special types of each of the thousands of founts in use have to be 
stocked, nor do typewriters have to be specially fitted. Esperanto can, of course, 
dispense with accents in the eame way as the modification of German vowels can be 
effected by the addition of an ‘ e ’ instead of the use of letters furnished with a dizresis, 
but the appearance of such matter is as unnatural to the eye as the sound of the 
speech is to the ear. 
Because of its natural derivation, printed and spoken Ido are pleasing to both eye 
and ear. Once convinced of the necessity for an international language, everyone in 
favour of Esperanto should be still more in favour of Ido, because Ido is really 
