Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 76.djvu/360

356 and the rest of the world with nine millions we get a total of twentyseven millions, which is probably a liberal allowance. We are, however, here concerned with the language of the Spanish-speaking people, not with their ethnology.

Coming now to England, it is calculated on the basis of the parish registers, as no one in those days thought of taking a census, that its population, including that of Wales, at the middle of the sixteenth century was about five millions. Two centuries later it had risen to six and a half millions. At the present time the number of persons whose native speech is English, or one of them if they speak two, falls not far short of one hundred and fifty millions. There are many persons in Wales, in Canada, and in other parts of the world who use two languages with about equal facility, but who would not claim English as their mothertongue. Probably as many as three fourths of this number have received, or are receiving, systematic instruction in the English language. It is probable that an equal, if not a larger, proportion are of AngloSaxon, or at least of Germanic stock.

I have spoken above of the aversion of the ancient Greeks to the acquisition of foreign languages. In modern times the French have manifested a similar reluctance. As "France marches at the head of civilization," why should Frenchmen concern themselves about those who are behind them? When almost every intelligent person in continental Europe knew French a Frenchman rarely took the trouble to learn a language spoken outside of his native country. This ignorance eventually cost the nation dear; for if Frenchmen had kept themselves informed of what was going on beyond the Rhine they would have been less eager to engage in a war with the nation that dwelt there. The same charge is frequently brought against English and American representatives of commercial houses in foreign countries. We have been told many times that the United States lose a great deal of trade because their agents will not take the trouble to learn the language of the natives with whom they desire to do business and that the Germans far outstrip them in this respect. It may be said further that the efforts of the Germans to preserve their speech in foreign countries meets with small success. The children of German immigrants rarely learn the language of their parents so well that they are able to use it as readily as that of their new habitat.

We have here what seems to be the only practical solution of the problem of a universal language. When we take note of the rapid expansion of English within the last century, it does not seem a fanciful prediction that before the end of another century all persons who wish to learn another language besides their own will choose English. German received a serious set-back by the Thirty Years war. The population of the country in 1618 is estimated at twenty-five millions. There are