"ENGLISH SPOKEN HERE"

Czecho-Slovakia's enterprising new government has undertaken to establish a modern public school system. The diversity of races makes this a problem of peculiar difficulty, for five principal divisions, Czechs, Maygars, Germans, Poles and Ruthenes demand instruction for their children in their respective mother tongues. As a result, the schools in all large cities must have five teachers for every class, carrying on the same work simultaneously in the five languages. Naturally, this duplication results in expense and waste. But with a shrewd eye to the future, the authorities have prescribed English for all students, so that, gradually a common tongue may replace the minor dialects for educational purposes.

In many respects, the Czecho-Slovak situation is similar to that of India, where native dialects are even more numerous. And in the Indian universities, the question has been solved in the same way. English is the language of education, like Latin in the days before the European tongues crystallized into definite form. Probably the reaction of India in favor of native languages, native traditions and literature will have its counterpart in Czecho-Slovakia if English is too widely employed. At present, however, nothing retards its extensive use in advertising and road signs; even means, which are often printed in French here, to the dismay of unsophisticated patrons, appear in English in Czecho-Slovakia:

Without doubt, the wanderlings of the Englishman and the American are more responsible for the growing use of English throughout Europe than any inherent superiority of the language. For a century, the English-speaking nations have furnished the world with tourists. And since both British and Americans persistently refuse to know any language but their own, the sensible Continentals have learned to meet them on their own ground. Germany has long taught English in her public schools; the educated foreigner, once devoted to French, has acquired English as well. In North America, Australia, South Africa and the British Isles, except Ireland, of course, English is the ruling tongue. With its increasing use in Europe, Asia and South America, the need for Esparanto that hobby of philologists, is rapidly disappearing.