lands. There are even now hundreds of school boys and girls in France, Germany, Austria, Spain, and even in China and Japan eager for such interchange of thoughts by means of Esperanto.

The hour or hour and a half spent weekly on this subject would be amply repaid by the increased intelligence and linguistic feeling of the pupils, and ultimately the subject could be taught with great benefit to the whole school, doing away with the necessity of ineffectual attempts at teaching foreign languages to all and sundry, regardless of taste and capacity.

(6) Perhaps a few remarks may be in place here to substantiate still more clearly the postulate that Esperanto fulfills absolutely the ideal requirement of a language that means to be introduced throughout the world as a secondary or auxiliary language: Facility of acquirement to all nations.

(a) There is not one difficult sound, such as our th, our obscure vowels, the French nasals, the German ä, ö, ü, etc. The vowels are a, e, i, o, and u. Each has but one sound value, and that long and full, approximately as in the phrase: "Pa may we go, too?"

(b) The tonic accent, an insuperable difficulty in English, on account of its irregularity and elusiveness, is in Esperanto invariably on the last vowel but one.

(c) The grammar is reduced to a minimum, the whole mechanism of Esperanto being compassed within 16 rules which any one can grasp and assimilate inside one hour.

(d) The vocabulary is extremely small, less than 1,000 roots, mostly common to every Aryan tongue, being sufficient for all ordinary purposes of language.

This is due to the marvelously ingenious system of word building, which enables anyone to derive from a dozen to one hundred and more words from every root, there being to this derivation no limit but that of common sense.

Of course, the vocabulary for science and technology is considerably larger, but equally flexible.

(e) There are no troublesome genders; sex is expressed by the insertion of "in" before the "o" ending of nouns, and of course only in the case of animate creation. For instance, "viro" is man, "virino" woman, "frato" brother, "fratino" sister, "kuzo" male cousin, "kuzino" female cousin, etc. And here Esperanto has over all other languages not only the signal advantage that there are no irregularities, but the far more important advantage that the scheme is applicable to all cases. For instance, although we have in English from 30 to 40 different ways of forming the feminine such as father, mother; brother, sister; uncle, aunt; bull, cow; stallion, mare; fox, vixen; etc., yet in most cases we possess no decent or sensible way to indicate the sex of the individuals; as, for instance, in the cases of teacher, doctor, friend, cousin, neighbor, witness, elephant, camel, goat, typist, stenographer, companion, president, chairman, etc.

Last, but not least, every word parses itself by its distinctive ending.

(7) The stupendous flexibility of Esperanto will be still better understood if I state here that it possesses some 30 particles (prefixes and suffixes), each with a definite meaning and each available whenever you want to attach that particular meaning to any word.

We have already seen that the suffix "in" expresses the female sex whenever it may be desirable to give it expression. So "id" denotes the offspring, "il" the tool or instrument, "isto" the profession, "ul" the person or individual, "ec" the quality (abstract), "aĵ" the concrete thing, product, or result, "eg" means large, and "et" small, etc. Now, let us see how this works out in practice. Bovo is bull; bovino, cow; bovido, calf; bovaĵo, beef; bovidino, female calf. And you may say bovego, boveto, bovinego, bovineto, bovidego, bovideto, bovidinego, and bovidineto if you wish to add the idea of size or smallness to the original or to the derived word.

Again: "Lern" is the root for learning. We first get lerni, to learn; lerna, learned; lerne, learnedly; learno, learning. Next, using a few of the particles we can make: lernebla, capable of being learned; lernema, inclined to learn (studious); lerninda, worth learning; lernilo, a text book (a tool); lernisto (a professional learner), a student; lernulo, a learned person, a scholar; lerneco, learning in the abstract; lernaĵo, the matter to be learned (concrete), etc. And once more note that what you can do with one root you can do with every root in the vocabulary. So that the originally available number of words is multiplied ten and hundred fold. Which simply means a tremendous saving of labor in learning words and forms and yet secures a range of expression and a degree of precision undreamed of in any other language.

(8) On the possible rivals, past, present, or future, to Esperanto see closing remarks.

(9) To complete what I said on the verb during the hearing I give here the entire paradigm of the verb in Esperanto.

Paroli, to speak; parolanta, speaking; parolata, spoken.

Present, I speak, etc.: Mi parolas, vi parolas, li parolas, ŝi parolas, ni parolas, vi parolas, ili parolas, oni (one) parolas, ĝi (it) parolas.

There a thus only one ending "as" for the present of every verb and the same for every person.

In the past the ending is "is": mi parolis, I spoke, etc.

In the future "os" mi parolos, I shall speak, etc. In the conditional "us": mi parolus, I should speak, etc. In the subjunctive "u": ke mi parolu, that I may or might speak, the tense being sufficiently indicated by the antecedent verb.

For the imperative we use the subjunctive without conjunction and generally without subject.

The participle has a most ingenious flexbility,

it having three forms, anta, inta, onta for the active, and ata, ita, ota for the passive; parolanta, speaking now; parolinta, having spoken; parolonta, about to be speaking; parolata, being spoken now; parolita, spoken formerly; parolota, to be spoken later.

Only practice can reveal the wonderful usefulness of this scheme, again, of course, applicable to all verbs.

One interesting sequel is, that as every word can be turned into a noun—if sense demands it—by simply changing the ending into o, we therefore get: parolanto, the present speaker; parolinto, the past speaker; parolonto, the future speaker.

Let no one say that such richness and possibility of precision is of no importance; many a life's jeopardy has turned on less. Nor can it be said that this unlimited capacity of expression makes the mechanism of the language cumbersome, for the whole scheme of Esperanto can be thoroughly mastered in a few hours.

(10) In England Esperanto has been on the school rates for several years; any technical or continuation school can apply to the board of education for permission to put Esperanto on its program. In 1909 it was already thus taught in 33 centers.

The London Chamber of Commerce holds examinations in Esperanto every year, and has done so since 1907. The United Kingdom Association of Teachers prepares for the certificate of proficiency in Esperanto.

In the town of Lille, France, Esperanto has been taught in the high schools for at least nine years; about 1,500 pupils benefiting yearly from this. The same is true of Rio de Janeiro, in