Page:British Weights and Measures - Superior to the Metric, by James W. Evans.djvu/38

30 be made to prohibit its use. Thus, in three diverse ways we have striking indications of the fact that the task of supplanting our present weights and measures with an inferior system is not likely to prove so easy as some people would have us believe.

The adoption of the metric scheme would not alone turn topsy turvy all our methods of weighing and measuring, and compel craftsmen and workmen, sellers and buyers, to abandon familiar bases of reckoning, but they would have to do it to the accompaniment of unfamiliar terms—of “kilos” and “litres” and “grammes,” carrying sometimes Greek, and sometimes Latin, preﬁxes. A strange system and a strange nomenclature would cause great worry, distraction and annoyance.

This question of language is not the least important among the varied aspects of the matter which must be taken into consideration. In the intercourse between civilised nations, the English tongue is the most widely used of all. For commercial purposes it has no equal in value. No matter What skill in the talking and writing of other countries may be achieved, people will still think in their mother tongue. A Frenchman will not think in German, or a German in English, but in the language of his country, and afterwards translate those thoughts into the language he wishes to be understood in. With us it comes as a second