ernational
languages of the future should be one, if not both, of two that possess
great literatures, and which embody cultures in some respects allied,
but in most respects admirably supplementing each other.[242]

The collapse of Volapuek stimulated the energy of those who believed that
the solution of the question lay in the adoption of a natural language.
To-day, however, there are few persons who, after carefully considering
the matter, regard this solution as probable or practicable.[243]

Considerations of two orders seem now to be decisive in rejecting the
claims of English and French, or, indeed, any other natural language, to
be accepted as an international language: (1) The vast number of
peculiarities, difficulties, and irregularities, rendering necessary so
revolutionary a change for international purposes that the language
would be almost transformed into an artificial language, and perhaps not
even then an entirely satisfactory one. (2) The extraordinary
development during recent years of the minor national languages, and the
jealousy of foreign languages which this revival has caused. This latter
factor is probably alone fatal to the adoption of any living language.
It can scarcely be disputed that neither English nor French occupies
to-day so relatively influential a position as it once occupied. The
movement against the use of French in Roumania, as detrimental to the
national language, is significant of a widespread feeling, while, as
regards English, the introduction by the Germans into commerce of the
method of approaching customers in their own tongue, has rendered
impossible the previous English custom of treating English as the
general language of commerce.

The natural languages, it became realized, fail to answer to the
requirements which must be made of an auxiliary international language.
The conditions which have to be fulfilled are thus formulated by Anna
Roberts:[244]

"_First_, a vocabulary having a maximum of internationality in its
root-words for at least the Indo-European races, living or bordering on
the confines of the old Roman Empire, whose vocabularies are already
saturated with Greek and Latin roots, absorbed during the long centuries
of contact with Greek and Roman civilization. As the centre of gravity
of the world's civilization now stands, this seems the most rational
beginning. Such a language shall then have:

"_Second_, a grammatical structure stripped of all the irre