WHICH LANGUAGE?

Evening Post, Volume XCVII, Issue 74, 29 March 1919, Page 10

WHICH LANGUAGE?

NEED OF A WORLD TONGUE

THE SPEECH OF DIPLOMACY.

"President Poineare spoke for twentyfive minutes, after which, without delay, tho official interpreter read an English translation of the address. .

Presumably the latter lasted twenty--fiv&.j_iinutes as well, so we arrive at the enticing situation of the Peace Conference dragging out twice as long as it ought to —owing to the absence of a world-tongue (writes "F.T." in the Daily Mail.)

This subject of an international language is not a new one. Yet it has a decidedly new significance to-day, with all the peoples of this earth apparently making an honest effort 'to understand one another once and for all.

"Understand one another." Therein lies the rub.

The more you wander in this world, the more is the vital importance of an affinity of speech borne in upon you. It is the beginning, the backbone, and the end of all things in human relationship. Ask any of our men returned from overseas.

In this war we distributed some six million Britons across the surface of the globe—sent them off armed, for the most part, only with their local dialect and truly insular, parochial outlook. Thanks to their innate genius for adaptability thoy made good with Frenchman as with -Belgian, with Italian and Arab. Greek and Serb, Russian and Portuguese. TONGtJ&TIED. Yet is there a man among those millions who will deny that had he been able to converse with the native of .the soil his stay abroad would 'have been a ' happier and more cordial one ? The thing is self-evident. Tongue-tied, you cannot enter into the life of your neighbour; you remain an outsider; a friend, not the product of human sympathy but of political expediency. No need to'labour the other side—the vast saving of time and energy and money in commerce and trade, and the international living of peoples generally, that would follow oh the recognition of a world-tongue. Rather let us pursue the notion of. ah international language as applied to the League, of Nations ideal. Mutual ignorance is admittedly- the cause of most of our human strife. That being so, half our quarrels and misunderstandings, half our fears and suspicions and innate enmity, must disappear were we but able to carry on as man to man with Frenchmen and Dane, Italian and Spaniard- ,

11l the new era of the air popular travel on a vast scale woidd come about were people certain of- being able to speak to the native when they "got to the other end." And speaking to is knowing, and knowing, as often as not, "liking,"

How often have we heard that phrase from a traveller returned from his first visit abroad : "Why, they're quite nice people!" Let that phrase becomo wholesale. Speech was the link of

life thought out by the Creator of "this sorry scheme of thing's entire," yet today, heading for A.D. 2000, the world as a whole is still largely in the gibbering monkey stage.

FRENCH OR ENGLISH?

There are only two possible worldtongues—French and English. Hero are the languages that have gradually conquered through the ages. Why propose a new "stunt" tongue, without tradition, without anything, beside one or the other of them?

"Especially when half the world1 that really matters already knows one of the two."

If French has been tho "lingua libra" of nations in tho past, to-day the language of the British Empire and the Ijnited States has very surely usurped that position. '

"But let the Peace Conference decide."

Objections will be raised to this grafting on to the svholo world of one particular tongue. It will be argued, for instance, that if English is taught broadcast such will be tantamount to promulgating "the English idea." Is this so in the United States? "The Americans, speaking English, remain as American as the French are French."