The CHAIRMAN. In which they can all meet on a common plane?

Prof. CHRISTEN. Yes; no matter where you may go, if you know Esperanto,
you shall not be a foreigner anywhere. The intention is to do away with
this terrible handicap of being unable to converse with your fellow men
of the various countries you may visit unless you learn all or most of
those languages, a thing which, as you know, is in most cases quite
impossible. It is the intention to have all the nations understand
Esperanto, and by that means make it possible for all the peoples of
the world to commune directly with each other. The time has come in the
world's history when a common vehicle of human expression is absolutely
necessary, and the barrier of Babel must fall, as mostly all other
obstacles to free intercourse have already fallen, before the triumphant
advance of modern science and technology. It is positively fatuous and
futile to ask the modern man, be he in commerce or science or what not,
to become an expert in his particular line of endeavor and a polyglot
besides. It can not be done. Languages are too many and each one too
complicated for our crowded curricula. The obligatory study of foreign
languages belongs to a remote past when there existed no sciences and
no industrial arts, when life was less crowded and when there were
fewer world languages. Even less than a hundred years ago a man was an
accomplished cosmopolitan if he knew French and his own mother tongue.
To-day he wants and ought to be conversant with French, German, and
Spanish, at the very least, besides English, and before long he will
have to tackle Russian and Japanese. As a matter of fact in some of the
European countries and in South America the school children actually
spend from 35 to 60 per cent of the school time in acquiring that sort
of an education, which is really not education at all but only a means
to an end.