The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-09-16

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 cannot read and write in proportion to the population than in what we call our intelligent land of the free. It Is only among the Russians who have come in that much ille1iacy is found. In 1919 only tree out of every hundred of the recruits for the army could not read or write, and these were mostly Slavs. There are prac- tically no illiterates among the adult Letts. The University of Riga was formerly a technical school with 1000 pupils. The new government has madej it a university, adding several colleges and bringing in new pr ofes- sors. When the new institution opened it had about 1900 stud ents, Ut has now more than 5000 and they are of both sexes.
 The high educational standing of the republic is shown by it's seco nd- ary schools. The country has more Portugal, or Rumania. It has now 1H. eachwith an average of I'll students each. It has agricultural colleges and experiment stations, and the mini5N~ try of education has recently es- tablished normal school for the teaching of English.
 This school Is an evidence of how fast the English language Is making It's way over Europe. It is spoken quite generally in Germany and here in Latvia Is the only foreign lam guage that Is compulsory in all of the schools, French and German being optional. The normal school has 300 students tf all ages, many of them old school teachers and oth- CTS who expect to teach. There are also gov vernment clerks who wish to acquire a working knowledge of English, and some who would fit themselves for service abroad. When I visited the school I found one of the classes studying Shake speare, reading the play of Julius Caesar" in turn, and discussing the construction and the motives of the speakers, just as 1t Is done in our high school and colleges. Another class was reciting English grammar and many of the questions they an swered were puzzling to me. During the present year a number of new courses have been formed, includ- ing comparative philology, methods of teaching, elocution, and the his- tory of English literature and lam guage.
 am surprised at the culture of the better classes of Letts. and even of the peasants. The Latvian tongue is one of the oldest in Europe and It is SO closely allied to the Sanskrit that a noted philologist whG was re- gently here said he found so many Sanskrit words in the newspapers that he would almost read Lettish without having studied the language They say the Latvian is more akin to the English than Is French, and that the people learn 1t more easily.
 The Let's are produd of their lt- erature, and of their music and ar tistic culture. They have recently published a huge collection of folk songs containing more than 200,00e original ones by unknown authors of centuries ago. This work Is in eight volumes of 1000 pages each and 1t Is considered an invaluable storehouse of Aryan culture for the ethnogra- pher and philologist.
 The language of these people has been In print for hundreds of years. The first Lettish book was published long before there was a settlement of any kind on the North American continent. and the first Lettish news paper appeared more than 100 years ago. When the World war opened there were 6e periodicals being pub lished in Lettish. and of these 27 were newspapers. There were twice as many newspapers in Latvia In proportion to the number of inhab- itants as nj Russia. and today Riga has 10 Lettish dailies with an aver age circulation each of from 50,000 to 100000 copies.