communities, with French, or English, or less probably
German winning the upper hand.

But when one turns to China there are the strangest possibilities. It is
in Eastern Asia alone that there seems to be any possibility of a
synthesis sufficiently great to maintain itself, arising outside of,
and independently of, the interlocked system of mechanically sustained
societies that is developing out of mediaeval Christendom. Throughout
Eastern Asia there is still, no doubt, a vast wilderness of languages,
but over them all rides the Chinese writing. And very strong--strong
enough to be very gravely considered--is the possibility of that writing
taking up an orthodox association of sounds, and becoming a world
speech. The Japanese written language, the language of Japanese
literature, tends to assimilate itself to Chinese, and fresh Chinese
words and expressions are continually taking root in Japan. The Japanese
are a people quite abnormal and incalculable, with a touch of romance, a
conception of honour, a quality of imagination, and a clearness of
intelligence that renders possible for them things inconceivable of any
other existing nation. I may be the slave of perspective effects, but
when I turn my mind from the pettifogging muddle of the English House of
Commons, for example, that magnified vestry that is so proud of itself
as a club--when I turn from that to this race of brave and smiling
people, abruptly destiny begins drawing with a bolder hand. Suppose the
Japanese were to make up their minds to accelerate whatever process of
synthesis were possible in China! Suppose, after all, I am not the
victim of atmospheric refraction, and they are, indeed, as gallant and
bold and intelligent as my baseless conception of them would have them
be! They would almost certainly find co-operative elements among the
educated Chinese.... But this is no doubt the lesser probability. In
front and rear of China the English language stands. It has the start of
all other languages--the mechanical advantage--the position. And if only
we, who think and write and translate and print and put forth, could
make it worth the world's having!

FOOTNOTES:

[44] Under the intoxication of the Keltic Renascence the most diverse
sorts of human beings have foregathered and met face to face, and been
photographed Pan-Keltically, and have no doubt gloated over these
collective photographs, without any of them realizing, it seems, what a
miscellaneous