er language, for no other language
would be of any practical use to them. All foreigners would be in a
position to bring to 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 render it practically
unnecessary for English-speakers (except the small class of students) to
learn any other language, would be to confer an immense boon on the
first group of peoples, doubling their mental and emotional capac