THE PROBLEM OF AN INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE

the English-speaking man whatever information they considered good for him. At first sight this seems a gain for the English-speaking peoples, because they would thus be spared a certain expenditure of energy; but a very little reflection shows that such a saving of energy is like that effected by the intestinal parasitic worm who has digested food brought ready to his mouth. It leads to degeneracy. Not the people whose language is learnt, but the people who learn a language reap the benefit, spiritual and material. It is now admitted in the commercial world that the ardour of the Germans in learning English has brought more advantage to the Germans than to the English. Moreover, the high intellectual level of small nations at the present time is due largely to the fact that all their educated members must be familiar with one or two languages besides their own. The great defect of the English mind is insularity; the virtue of its boisterous energy is accompanied by lack of insight into the differing virtues of other peoples. If the natural course of events led to the exclusive use of English for international communication, this defect would be still more accentuated. The immense value of becoming acquainted with a foreign language is that we are thereby led into a new world of tradition and thought and feeling. Before we know a new language truly, we have to realize that the words which at first seem equivalent to words in our own language often have a totally different atmosphere, a different rank or dignity from that which they occupy in our own language. It is in learning this difference in the moral connotation of a language and its expression in literature that we reap the real benefit of knowing a foreign tongue. There is no other way—not even residence in a foreign land if we are ignorant of the language—to take us out of the customary circle of our own traditions. It imparts a mental flexibility and emotional sympathy which no other discipline can yield. To ordain that all non-English-speaking peoples should learn English in addition to their mother tongue, and to