THE QUESTION ON INTERNATIONAL COINAGE
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Ellis, Havelock
It must be remembered that the international auxiliary language is an organic part of a larger internationalization which must inevitably be effected, and is indeed already coming into being. Two related measures of intercommunication are an international system of postage stamps, and an international coinage, to which may be added an international system of weights and measures, which seems to be already in course of settlement by the increasingly general adoption of the metric system. The introduction of the exchangeable international stamp coupon represents the beginning of a truly international postal system; but it is only a beginning. If a completely developed international postal system were incidentally to deliver some nations, and especially the English, from the depressingly ugly postage stamps they are now condemned to use, this reform would possess a further advantage almost as great as its practical utility. An international coinage is, again, a prime necessity, which would possess immense commercial advantages in addition to the great saving of trouble it would effect. The progress of civilization is already working towards an international coinage. In an interesting paper on this subject ("International Coinage," Popular Science Monthly, March, 1910) T.F. van Wagenen writes; "Each in its way, the great commercial nations of the day are unconsciously engaged in the task.
The English shilling is working northwards from the Cape of Good Hope, has already come in touch with the German mark and the Portuguese peseta which have been introduced on both the east and west sides of the Continent, and will in due time meet the French franc and Italian lira coming south from the shores of the Mediterranean. In Asia, the Indian rupee, the Russian rouble, the Japanese yen, and the American-Philippine coins are already competing for the patronage of the Malay and the Chinaman. In South America neither American nor European coins have any foot-hold, the Latin-American nations being well supplied by systems of their own, all related more or less closely to the coinage of Mexico or Portugal. Thus the plainly evolutionary task of pushing civilization into the uneducated parts of the world through commerce is as badly hampered by the different coins offered to the barbarian as are the efforts of the evangelists to introduce Christianity by the existence of the various denominations and creeds. The Church is beginning to appreciate the wastage in its efforts, and is trying to minimize it by combinations among the denominations having for their object to standardize Christianity, so to speak, by reducing tenet and dogma to the lowest possible terms. Commerce must do the same. The white man's coins must be standardized and simplified.... The international coin will come in a comparatively short time, just as will arrive the international postage stamp, which, by the way, is very badly needed.
For the upper classes of all countries, the people who travel, and have to stand the nuisance and loss of changing their money at every frontier, the bankers and international merchants who have to cumber their accounts with the fluctuating item of exchange between commercial centres will insist upon it. All the European nations, with the exception of Russia and Turkey, are ready for the change, and when these reach the stage of real constitutionalism in their progress upward, they will be compelled to follow, being already deeply in debt to the French, English, and Germans. Japan may be counted upon to acquiesce instantly in any unit agreed upon by the rest of the civilized world."
This writer points out that the opening out of the uncivilized parts of the world to commerce will alone serve to make an international coinage absolutely indispensable.
Without, however, introducing a really new system, an auxiliary international money system (corresponding to an auxiliary international language) could be introduced as a medium of exchange without interfering with the existing coinages of the various nations. Réné de Saussure (writing in the Journal de Genève, in 1907) has insisted on the immense benefit such a system of "monnaie de compte" would be in removing the burden imposed upon all international financial relations by the diversity of money values. He argues that the best point of union would be a gold piece of eight grammes—almost exactly equivalent to one pound, twenty marks, five dollars, and twenty-five francs—being, in fact, but one-third of a penny different from the value of a pound sterling. For the subdivisions the point of union must be decimally divided, and M. de Saussure would give the name of speso to a ten-thousandth part of the gold coin.
"I'm taught p-l-o-u-g-hShall be pronouncèd 'plow,''Zat's easy when you know,' I say,'Mon Anglais I'll get through.'
"My teacher say zat in zat caseO-u-g-h is 'oo,'And zen I laugh and say to him'Zees Anglais make me cough.'
"He say, 'Not coo, but in zat wordO-u-g-h is "off,"'Oh, sacre bleu! such varied soundsOf words make me hiccough!
"He say, 'Again, mon friend ees wrong!O-u-g-h is "up,"In hiccough,' Zen I cry, 'No more,You make my throat feel rough,'
"'Non! non!' he cry, 'you are not right—O-u-g-h is "uff."'I say, 'I try to speak your words,I can't prononz zem though,'
"'In time you'll learn, but now you're wrong,O-u-g-h is "owe."''I'll try no more. I sall go mad,I'll drown me in ze lough!'
"'But ere you drown yourself,' said he,'O-u-g-h is "ock."'He taught no more! I held him fast,And killed him wiz a rough!"
Source notes
[236] The history of the efforts to attain a universal language has been written by Couturat and Leau, Histoire de la Langue Universelle, 1903.
[237] The distinguished French physician, Dr. Sollier, also, in an address to the Lisbon International Medical Congress, on "La Question de la Langue Auxiliaire Internationale," in 1906, advocating the adoption of one of the existing Romance tongues, said: "Spanish is the simplest of all and the easiest, and if it were chosen for this purpose I should be the first to accept it."
[238] It has even been stated by a distinguished English man of science that Latin is sometimes easier for the English to use than is their own language. "I have known Englishmen who could be trusted to write a more intelligible treatise, possibly even to make a more lucid speech, in Latin than in English," says Dr. Miers, the Principal of London University (Lancet, 7th October, 1911), and he adds: "Quite seriously, I think some part of the cause is to be sought in the difficulty of our language, and many educated persons get lost in its intricacies, just as they get lost in its spelling." Without questioning the fact, however, I would venture to question this explanation of it.
[239] Thus in one article on the growing extension of the English language throughout the world (Macmillan's Magazine, March, 1892) we read: "English is practically certain to become the language of the world.... The speech of Shakespeare and Milton, of Dryden and Swift, of Byron and Wordsworth, will be, in a sense in which no other language has been, the speech of the whole world." We do not nowadays meet with these wild statements.
[240] The stumbling-stones for the foreigner presented by English words in "ough" have often been referred to, and are clearly set forth in the verses in which Mr. C.B. Loomis has sought to represent a French learner's experiences—and the same time to show the criminal impulses which these irregularities arouse in the pupil.
[241] It is interesting to remember that at one period in European history, French seemed likely to absorb English, and thus to acquire, in addition to its own motor force, all the motor force which now lies behind English. When the Normans—a vigorous people of Scandinavian origin, speaking a Romance tongue, and therefore well fitted to accomplish a harmonizing task of this kind—occupied both sides of the English Channel, it seemed probable that they would dominate the speech of England as well as of France. "At that time," says Méray (La Vie aux Temps des Cours d'Amour, p. 367), who puts forward this view, "the people of the two coasts of the Channel were closer in customs and in speech than were for a long time the French on the opposite banks of the Loire.... The influential part of the English nation and all the people of its southern regions spoke the Romance of the north of France. In the Crusades the Knights of the two peoples often mixed, and were greeted as Franks wherever their adventurous spirit led them. If Edward III, with the object of envenoming an antagonism which served his own ends, had not broken this link of language, the two peoples would perhaps have been united to-day in the same efforts of progress and of liberty.... Of what a fine instrument of culture and of progress has not that fatal decree of Edward III deprived civilization!"
[242] I was at one time (Progressive Review, April, 1897) inclined to think that the adoption of both English and French, as joint auxiliary international languages—the first for writing and the second for speaking—might solve the problem. I have since recognized that such a solution, however advantageous it might be for human culture, would present many difficulties, and is quite impracticable.
[243] I may refer to three able papers which have appeared in recent years in the Popular Science Monthly: Anna Monsch Roberts, "The Problem of International Speech" (February, 1908); Ivy Kellerman, "The Necessity for an International Language," (September, 1909); Albert Léon Guérard, "English as an International Language" (October, 1911). All these writers reject as impracticable the adoption of either English or French as the auxiliary international language, and view with more favour the adoption of an artificial language such as Esperanto.
[244] A.M. Roberts, op. cit.
[245] It should be added, however, that the auxiliary language need not be used as a medium for literary art, and it is a mistake, as Pfaundler points out, to translate poems into such a language.
[246] See International Language and Science, 1910, by Couturat, Jespersen, Lorenz, Ostwald, Pfaundler, and Donnan, five professors living in five different countries.
[247] The progress of the movement is recorded in its official journal, Progreso, edited by Couturat, and in De Beaufront's journal, La Langue Auxiliaire.