I doubt whether there are many people in our Southern States who have considered how much more difficult the situation in the Southern States would be if the masses of the black people spoke a language different from the white people around them, and particularly if, at the same time, they cherished political and social ambitions that were antagonistic to the interests of the white man.
On the other hand, I doubt whether the Negro people realize the advantage which they have in speaking one of the great world languages, the language, in fact, that is more largely used than any other by the people who are most advanced in science, in the arts, and in all that makes the world better. English is not only a great world language, it is the language of a people and a race among whom the highest are neither afraid nor ashamed to reach down and lift up the lowest, and help them in their efforts to reach a higher and a better life.
In the south of Europe conditions are quite different. The languages spoken there, so far from helping to bring people together, are the very means by which the peoples are kept apart. Furthermore, the masses of the people of Austria speak languages which, until a hundred years ago, had almost no written literature. Up to the beginning of the last century the educated people of Hungary spoke and wrote in Latin, and down to the middle of the century Latin was still the language of the Court. Until 1848 there were almost no schools in the Czech language in Bohemia. Up to that time there were almost no newspapers, magazines, or books printed in the language spoken by the masses of the people.
It has been said that the written or literary languages of the Slavic people have been, with one or two exceptions, almost created during the past hundred years. In fact, some of the Slavs, although they have a rich oral literature, still have, I have been told, no written language of their own.
A great change has been brought about in this respect in recent years. At the present time, of the 5,000 periodicals printed in Austria-Hungary, about 2,000 are printed in German, 938 in Magyar, 582 in Czech, and the remaining 1,480 are in some five or six other languages. The Magyar language is now taught in all the schools of Hungary, whether some other language is taught at the same time or not. Outside of Hungary, in Austria proper, there are some 8,000 exclusively German schools, 5,578 Czech, and 6,632 schools in which are taught other Slav dialects, not to speak of the 645 schools in which Italian is taught, the 162 schools in which Roumanian is taught, and the 5 in which Magyar is taught.