Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 75.djvu/287

Rh Finnish and the scattered Yiddish. Not even with this may he be content, although it demand the work of a lifetime and more, but must turn to the east, with its Persian, Armenian, Arabic, Turkish and numerous Hindoo tongues, and then pass on to China and Japan, and even to Korea.

Who can boast of all this? Yet who will deny that not one nor many, but in truth each and every one, of the intelligent citizens of every nation should have the power of overcoming these linguistic barriers? This is one of the great needs of the civilized world, as urged in the Prime Minister's address at the Seventeenth Universal Peace Congress held in London, July, 1908: " I have said it before, but I would say it again, the main thing is that nations should get to know and understand one another." This is profoundly true. Not only the future but the present of these various-tongued races and nations is intertwined to such an extent that the power of free intercommunication is an imperious necessity. But if this direly needed intercourse is so impossible of universal or even fairly general attainment under existing circumstances, another solution must be sought.

The solution that presents itself next is, that some one of these languages be chosen for universal international use. Next after the mother-tongue, this should be learned by every inhabitant of the civilized world, and all publications of any importance whatever should be published directly or in duplicate in this international medium. All international correspondence should be thus conducted, and the language likewise used in all international assemblies and conventions. To learn one language besides the native tongue would not be so absolutely impossible as the absurd idea of learning many or all of them. The proposal is good, and the selection of this language at once becomes a problem worthy of attention, for that one language should serve all nations of the world in international dealings is eminently reasonable.

The place of a semi-common language among the educated classes was held by Latin in the middle ages, and the mind at once reverts to this, with speculations as to the possibility of its revival. But Latin can not serve this purpose. Its vocabulary is too limited and too unsuitable for discussion of modern themes, since even a bicycle or an umbrella demands circumlocution in Latin, while the introduction of new and modern words would destroy its purity, and make it but a barbarous hodge-podge of Latin forms. Moreover, the difficulties of Latin grammar and syntax prevent this language from being easily mastered. Only at the expense of much time and effort can the modern mind completely assimilate the ancient ways of word-inflection and sentence construction. Any one may admire the purity and severe elegance of Ciceronian Latin, but not every one is able to imitate it. Yet Ciceronian Latin would unhesitatingly be chosen as the standard for a revivification of this tongue. The silver Latinity and that of the