Excerpt from A Short History of the International Language Movement

The world, in this third decade of the twentieth century, offers a tragic contrast. On the one hand, material obstacles between the remotest parts of the earth are fast crumbling down. On the other, there have never been deeper chasms between race and race, or between nation and nation.

Science is universal in its principles and in its results, cosmopolitan in its personnel, international in its activities. It would be ludicrous to speak of "French astronomy" or "American mathematics." The applications of science to industry have radically transformed the conditions of life. The world is larger to-day than it was a hundred years ago, and infinitely more complex, but it is also infinitely more cohesive. The heart of Asia, Africa, South America, can now be reached in a railroad car, intelligence is flashed from continent to continent in less time than, a century ago, news could be carried by the swiftest messenger to a neighbouring city. Thus the interdependence or solidarity of nations has become an actual fact rather than an ideal. Railroads, steamships, telegraphs, wireless stations, have made the whole world immediately sensitive to everything that happens anywhere on its surface: they have created a universal consciousness - the inevitable forerunner of a universal conscience.

These considerations are commonplace enough: we trust that their natural consequences will seem no less obvious.

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