but that they are auxiliary means of locomotion, so Esperanto and Inter-

lingua share only the characteristic that they are media of comm.unication,
the first inside a crusading order of aspiring (linguistic) conquer-
ers, the (with .various restrictions and .. qualifications) among
ple whose verbal habits are - specie latinatis - reducible to a com-
mon norm.
. .
If the f oregoing reflects a certain irony, I must apologize. It seems
I. carinot hide the . fact that I do not think highly of the Esperantist cult.
This is my privilege, and no one need attribute particular importanceto
it: I don' t myself.
What matters . here is solely the fact - the very fact . I once hped_, J1+y
debate wit"Q. Dr. Lapenna would make clear to all concerned - that
and Interlingua are not rivals, that they cannot be compared, thqt .
have sprung from unrelated bases, that they strive to serve nn.-congruent.
objectives through non-congruent qualifications, and that all altercations
generated by their unwarranted juxtaposition are ludicrous and certainly
wasteful.
I am of course ready to subject. my insistence on the incomparability
of and Interlingua to one ultimate qualification (already allud-
ed:::to above): They both are languages o But this is a trai t they share wi th
several thousand other entities and justifies their comparison only in
the non-evaluative terms -of comparative linguistics, which obviously is
not .twhat our inveterate interlinguistic comparators have in mind
. On the +evel with which we are here concerned (because it is the .
level C.haracteristic of more than 99 per cent of all interlinguistic dis-
course), the salient point about Esperanto is that it wishes tobe voted
into office - step by step or in one fell swoop - as the world's official
language for international verbal exchanges. all discussions as to whether
or not . it : is qualified for the job seem utterly irrelevant and beside the
point. As my good friend Dr. Mario Pei*) has pointed out so often and so
cogently, any . language is qualified for the job (potentially at least),
including of course Esperanto as well as Interlingua or Finnish or Ring-
genberg SchwyzerdUtsch, provided it is voted into office. What really di-
vides the minds is not the question as to whether or not a particular
langage - specifically Esperanto - can 'function or can be made to func-
tion. as a :l.1.....-ii. i versal . secondary language , but rather the question as to
whether the plan to get some particular language - any language - voted
into office a:s a lmiversal medium of international communication is (1)
worthy of tr.c dedica:t;ed idealism i t comm.ands in a respectable number of
heads and hearts or -is (2) an outgrowth of a harmless . but incredibly
naive of the nature and possibilities of the dynamics of
social evolution.
On the level with which we are here concerned, the salient character-
istic of Interlingue. is its in the acceptance (supplemented by a
little steering and pushing and engineering) .of the extant linguistic
muddie with all . its glories and miseries reflective of how our past kept
moving and hence commensurate with where we now .happen to stand. Inter-
lingua is not a brain-produced device designed to enable some powerful
combine to force the speakers of naturally diverging languages to accept
(for their own "good") a supplementary medium of international communica-
tion but rather a gentlysupervised natural distillate, reflecting, dem-
onstrating, and eXPloiting in practical service the fact that the Greco-
Latin tradi tion affects, continues" to a.r:i-d makes ...
. . . . " : . ... . . ,. .. .. ., .. ' "!" .. .. ' . .. , . .. , . ' .. '' . .. ... .. . .. . .. ... .. .. .. ' .. "'"'. " . . .. .. ' . . - .. "' ""' . .. .. . ' _, .. ". .' . . . ... ._ .
*) most of whose other arguments . in matters interlirigistic I find it
hard to reconcile with the keen astuteness of mind I admire in him