Arizona republican., 1901-09-13
Applicable to the American
 Territories
Great Britain is Again Learning iD the Mediterranean Island the Folly of Fostering Plurality of Tongues.

small scale it is as complete an object lesson as could be wished for in the folly of fostering a plurality of tongues. England has always acted on the the-- ory that to multiply. dialects is to di- tempted to popularize her own lan- guage by forcing it upon conquered aliens. Mauritius is today as French as it ever was; Canada and South Af- rica are bi-lingual; even the Channel islands are more French than English. Wherever the English have set their rule over foreigners. their policy has been to encourage them to retain thei.' own speech. No other country in the world does SO. The Russians-and what Russian can blame them?-are at this moment stamping out Finnish. In Germans have three-quarters German ized Alsace-L Lorraine in the gymnasia. The Spaniards spread their language over the whole of South America and so hindered fo- a hundred years the downfall of their empire. Everything points to the United States establish ing English as the ultimate official lan- guags of the American empire. But the good nature and easygoingness of England have seduced her into sacri- ficing common sense to Sentimentality. She would far rather push her religion among black and brown men than her language among white men; and as consequence she has in Canada created two races where she might have made one; and in South Africa she has wil fully set up rampant between British and Dutch, and so brought on the pres ent war That statement is not too strong. Had the British set themselves
 
 Town to teaching English. to maxim 2 English the language Of the schools. law courts and local assemblies, there would today be but one tongue for white men south O. the Zambesi; the two races would have fused and the possibility of trouble have been so enormously diminished that even the phenomenal tactleSsness of the colonisl Iofiice could hardly have revived 1t.
 For over thirty years the language question in Malta has acutely emba - rassed the work of government. The English have only themselves to thank for allowing it to become a question [ all. Italian has no logical standing in the island whatever. It is not the lan- guage of the natives. who speak an in cura ble vernacular akin to Arabic. and it is not the language of the empire It was introduced into the colony about hundred years ago by some Italian emigrants from the mainland. but within that time it has made SO little headway that today less than per cent of the natives are able to converse in it. For the past twenty years all the edu- cation in Malta that has amounted 10 anything has been. in English. The statistics of the last three years show that 9S per cent of the people voIunta-- fly choose to have their children edu cated in it. Nevertheless, Italian has long enjoyed a privileged position. !. was for years the exclusive language of the,law courts; 1t is at this moment op- tional in the council, and attempts ] have been made to establish it as tEs | Sole medium of instruction. These at | tempts have not proceeded only from | the Italian lawyers, priests and politi- ciaIs of the island. Sir Penrose Julyan, reviewing the whole question in the i seventies, wrote that "a great error was committed by the late Sir George Corn wall Lewis when he recommended tha; preference should be given to Italian over English in the educational and l other establishment of the colony. | There is no need to speculate on the motives that urged Sir George Lewis to this recommendation. He has himself put them down in black and white | From it's use as the language of trade throughout the Mediterranean" he wrote, and from the near neighbor- hood of Malta to Italy and Sicily, the Italian language is far more useful 'c a Maltese than any other language ex- cept his own So far as trade goes ! the event has ludicrously disproved Sii ! Georges expectations; but the most re markable part of his argument is wha it does not contain. The notion that 2 British statesman could be profitab;y employed in pushing the English Ian guage that he owed any debt whatever political or sentimental. to his mothe tongue, never seems to have occurred ! to him.
 Had Sir George Lewis's policy beer carried out uninterruptedly England might today be ruling in Malta an It allan speaking community, taking it: political orders from Rome, and thor oughly out os harmony with it's Englisl governors. Fortunately common sen=e however haltingly, intervened. Italian was dispossesSed and English brack
 eted with it Gs an obligatory languag
 in the schools; and under this absurt system, which forced the Maltese chil
 dren to learn three tongues-EnglisI
 Italian anu the native dialect-th
 schools were administered up to four O
 five years ago. Then the obvious fac
 was discovered that the strain on tn
 infant mind was too great, and tha
 the Maltese were growing up impar
 tially ignorant of either English or It
 allan. It was therefore determined t
 teach Maltese only in the elementar. schools. and after that to allow the par
 ents to choose between Italian an,
 English in the higher grades. In spit of the noisy pressure of the Italia1
 clique the inhabitants have given a vir
 tually unanimous preference to Eng
 fish, the statistics showing that in 19O