A standing committee was elected, including Ostwald, Couturat, De Beaufront, and Jespersen, which was entrusted with the task of determining the new forms of the international auxiliary language on the basis of the principles laid down in the sittings mentioned above.
The changes carried out by the committee of the Delegation are embodied in the form of new grammars and dictionaries. The Delegation succeeded not only in recognising, but also in correcting in a competent manner, the errors of Esperanto, with the result that we are to-day in possession of a language which in respect of facility, lucidity, variety, and elegance of expression, represents the high-water mark of international speech.
The success which this reform achieved amongst the public and also in Esperantist circles immediately after the publication by the Delegation of the first specimen of the new language was astonishing. That which the Esperantists had scarcely succeeded in doing during six years of their existence took place with astonishing rapidity before our eyes, and in scarcely as many months there were formed in sixty towns of Europe and America local groups of enthusiastic people affiliated to the Delegation.
Unfortunately the Fundamentists persist in their obstinacy and continue to manifest their discontent. Although the new language has sprung from Esperanto and is based upon it, the Esperantists have forbidden that the name Esperanto should be used. The conventional name _Ido_ (_i.e._, a descendant) has therefore been given to it. There exist already some periodicals in the _linguo internaciona_. The chief organ of the new movement is the periodical _Progreso_ (pronounced _Progresso_), "_oficiala organo di la Delegitaro por adopto di linguo helpanta internaciona_." It is edited by Professor L. Couturat in Paris, and owes its name, programme, and policy to the advice and initiative of Ostwald.
The superiority of Ido over Esperanto is so striking and is so incontestably borne out by practical experience that one can now really speak, after the Volapük and Esperanto periods, of a third world-language movement which has started off with a reaction-velocity hitherto unknown in this department of knowledge. It is characteristic of the new language that it has been taken up by the English and Americans, whilst an introduction of primitive Esperanto amongst the Anglo-Saxons encountered insuperable obstacles, for, as was pointed out with good reason, the English language, especially in regard to its grammar, was superior to Esperanto on account of a number of clumsy constructions and errors which the latter contained. But, apart from the regularity of pronunciation, Ido excels the English language both in regard to grammar and, what is of great importance, brevity, a printed Ido text being even briefer than the corresponding English one.