This essay concerns a situation in more than 800 liberal arts colleges, though some of its points apply elsewhere in American education. The question posed—why a foreign language requirement?—has fresh relevance because the 1930–1950 trend of dropping this requirement for the Bachelor of Arts degree has very recently been reversed.

My Sense of gratitude—of indebtedness—has often propelled me into difficult situations but none more difficult than the one in which I find myself tonight. I accepted the invitation of your Executive Secretary, Mr. George Winchester Stone, Jr., to address this formidable assemblage because such knowledge of foreign languages as I possess has been and still is one of the most formative influences on my whole life and my concept of the meaning of life.

First of all I should like to express my deepest appreciation for your invitation to participate in the discussions at this Annual Meeting of the Modern Language Association. It is indeed a great honor you have extended to my country in inviting me to speak to such a distinguished gathering. It is, however, an honor which I have accepted with some hesitancy. As a layman in the field of linguistics I know that I am not the right person to address an association of scholars. Moreover, my desire to make a somewhat valuable contribution to these discussions has been greatly handicapped by the lack of source material and reference books which I wished to consult but which are not presently available in Washington.

The Map of the world conveys to us the fact that political boundaries are very often identical with linguistic boundaries. This is particularly the case in Europe. Each people there has its own language and this language is also the primary element of its particular culture. This is true of the larger countries like England, Italy, Germany, Spain, Russia and Poland, and is almost true of France, whose linguistic domain on the European continent overlaps part of only Belgium and Switzerland. This statement applies also to the smaller countries: Portugal, the Netherlands, Denmark, and the Balkan States. For all these peoples, and for many others, unity of language is one of the features contributing to political unity.

It is, Indeed, a privilege for me to discuss before this gathering of distinguished scholars the subject of “The Role of Languages in the Development of National Consciousness in India.” It is a subject of the greatest importance for the stability and progress of our country. It is also one of the toughest subjects ever confronted by a new nation. Efforts to resolve it constitute a most significant case history and experiment in democratic ideology. In fact, on the result of this experiment may well depend the success of democracy in India and other Asian countries which have similar language problems.

In the discussion we must start with two really striking facts, both very little known even among scholars close to Modern Hebrew; at least these scholars are not aware of their importance. In the first place you may have heard that Hebrew is a revived language, the language of the Bible come to life again in Israel. This is only partly true. Modern Hebrew—I know of no parallel in this respect—is a recreated language, a new Hebrew dialect, made of several ingredients. Most of them go back to the various layers of Hebrew in the past. Still, it is—and I am exaggerating deliberately—a kind of invented language, a kind of Hebrew Esperanto.

We Felt honoured and pleased at the Canadian Embassy to have been asked to participate in this annual meeting of the Modern Language Association. We welcomed this opportunity to register our interest in your important and useful field of work, and thereby to add still another point of contact in the friendly relations between our two countries.

It Has Been a rare privilege this afternoon to hear these excellent papers describing widely divergent linguistic situations in neighbor nations stretching from the South Seas to the Canadian Rockies in the Far Northwest. The distinguished speakers have given our own Program a new perspective; and their contributions are a generous response to an FL Communiqué which we sent last August to some 160 persons in thirty-five countries, in an effort to tell our foreign colleagues the story of what is happening to languages in the United States. Our situation is of course different from any of those described, but this very diversity can suggest to us valuable lessons.

Herzlich Willkommen! Soyez les bienvenus! Siate ben venuti, tutti! Boas vindas! Dobro pozhalovat'! Céad mile fáilte! jEstán ustedes en su casa! [Felices Pascuas y Próspera Año Nuevo! (No, that's for Christmas cards.) You see, I can espeak the English too! Also! So I shall add, translating one of these greetings, “A hundred thousand welcomes!” Welcome to the city described by Esquire as “Everybody's Other Home Town,” and by our local Board of Trade as “Beautiful, Exciting Washington!”

The year ending 30 September was a very active one for the Association. This activity is reflected in the fact that both receipts and disbursements ended by exceeding even the figures of the revised budget which we worked out in the Spring. Among receipts, a few items deserve particular comment. Almost $53,000 was remitted to the Association in dues, an increase of more than $3,400 over the preceding year. Library subscriptions increased moderately; sales of PMLA and the Style Sheet brought us about $1,000 more than they did last year. The Style Sheet I would again like to single out especially: we sold over 12,000 copies, realizing more than $3,100; the cost of printing and distributing it came to slightly more than $1,100. Our net profit, in other words, amounted to more than $2,000. Last night at the Council meeting someone referred to the Style Sheet as Bill Parker's permanent legacy to the M LA—and when one considers that this sum is almost half of what we received from our investments, one appreciates how true this characterization was.

Your very kind applause encourages me to say that it is a pleasure to find myself with but this single responsibility at an MLA meeting. I shall repay you in part with a very brief report.

All that I have to report on at this time is the meeting of the executive committee of the Federation, held in Paris on December 2. All the regular delegates of the nine member-associations were present, and all but one of the officers. Professor Bôckmann, the chairman of the local committee for the Heidelberg Congress, and M. Jean d'Ormesson, representing CIPSH, were also present by invitation.

At a meeting of the Commission on Trends held at Atlantic City in the winter of 1950, its members agreed, according to the report of Dean Thomas Clark Pollock, then its chairman, that the commission's “function was not operational, i.e., conducting educational investigations, but what we may for want of a better term call philosophical, i.e., the discussion of educational trends or conditions affecting areas represented in the Modern Language Association of America, and the preparation of reports or brief statements presenting its views on these trends or conditions.” During the period of Dean Pollock's chairmanship no statement on educational trends was issued, since other business proved more pressing; but at a meeting held at MLA headquarters on 21 and 22 April 1952, members of the Commission agreed to discharge their obligation by compiling jointly a report on developments and issues in the academic world which could be presented at the association's winter meeting. To this document, for which the chairman must acknowledge editorial responsibility, contributions were made by Dean John S. Diekhoff, Professors John H. Fisher, Helena M. Gamer, Kathrine Roller, Gordon N. Ray, and Francis M. Rogers. The materials surveyed were extensive—books, educational journals, bulletins, reports, college catalogs and announcements, newspapers, magazines; and in addition to their wide-ranging reviews, the contributors undertook a few special inquiries. They do not, however, in publishing their findings, make any pretension to scientific thoroughness, to close statistical accuracy, or to complete disinterestedness. The scanning and digesting of the literature currently available on the subject of American education is a very large task; the selection and appraisal of what is important must depend to a considerable degree upon the judgment and experience of the collaborators. Published accounts of projected innovations, or of educational processes, do not always reveal the genuine objectives, the actual character, of the activities described, or the kind of implementation achieved; indeed an adequate knowledge of these matters cannot often be gained by any means short of direct observation and inquiry. Such opportunities were not often open to members of the commission, who have had to record, along with the facts they have collected, some impressions and educated guesses. Since, however, the commission includes in its membership deans, department chairmen, a former officer of MLA who spent many years at headquarters, and graduate teachers of long experience—all persons who have had considerable practice in gauging the state of education in several parts of the country, and all persons responsible for predicting future developments—this composite view may prove useful. The collaborators have occupied themselves chiefly with the trends apparent in higher education in the United States, and in particular with those affecting the humanities.