To most of us who visit the U. S. Naval Academy ten or 20 or even 30 years after graduation, the visible changes are subtle and minor. The midshipmen may look taller, their work-a-day uniforms more comfortable, and the girls almost as pretty as those we knew. Yet, it is within the walls that the really great changes have taken place. Gone is the rigidity that bound all to the same courses, regardless of prior schooling. Gone are the days when in plebe year, I wasted time on mechanical drawing already learned at Baltimore Polytechnic. Gone are the days when the math wizards sat bored stiff with the simplicity of a trigonometry class that had me burning the midnight oil. There was no alternate choice.
And now, “Language Course To Be Slashed at Naval Academy!” say the headlines from Annapolis. About to go are the days when a foreign language is obligatory for all Academy midshipmen.
The totems of tradition are pulled down reluctantly. To be able to chat in a foreign language, preferably French, was considered for generations to be an essential element of the gentleman. But most practical people would now agree that today’s aspiring gentleman would have a slim chance of acquiring a useful command of any foreign language in today’s average college curriculum, including the Naval Academy’s. The fact is that about ten per cent will be stimulated into continuing on to real competence. Fifty per cent may retain enough to distinguish the entree from the vegetables on the menu. The rest very soon will have washed their brains absolutely clean of a subject which from the very beginning left them stone cold.
For a hundred years the young Republic found muzzle-loaders, black powder, and the English language amply effective tools with which to fight its wars. Later in the military game, a few minor linguistic complications arose with Apachean, Tagalog, and Spanish. But not until World War II had actually burst upon us was there a general awakening to our grave shortcomings in language capability. In the complex tongue of our paramount enemy we were close to being deaf, dumb, and blind. We were not only at a dangerous disadvantage in facing our foes; we were equally seriously handicapped in communicating with some of our new allies, caught as we were with muzzle-loader language capabilities in a Buck Rogers war.
It had long been a popular conception that in a country with the polyglot national background of the United States one could easily find every language needed and in any quantity. The actual truth is that in American children the desire to speak English and be carbon copies of other boys and girls is so overpoweringly strong that only in rare instances will the offspring of foreign-born parents retain the slightest trace of experience in a foreign tongue.
World War II brought this out with startling clarity—it was those “rare instances” of the second generation who did know a little of their parents’ mother tongue on whom we precariously had to lean until the cram courses started to produce sufficient numbers of adequate linguists.
“There will be no problem in getting you a Russian-speaking staff,” the Bureau of Naval Personnel assured our attache in Moscow when he set up shop in 1941. It was explained that if one wanted, let us say, a left-handed seven-footer, adept at driving a motorcycle, who wore a purple goatee and could recite the multiplication table backward, the punch card machines would clatter through the several hundred thousand records and turn up half a dozen suitable candidates in a few minutes. And what came to Moscow? Ruthenians and Poles and Slovaks and speakers of Yiddish and Ukrainian. But nary a Russian. There was nobody in BuPers who knew enough Russian to check them out.
The situation with respect to Japanese language speakers was almost as bad as Russian, but far more serious. Vis-a-vis the mortal enemy, we were at a grave disadvantage; for every American who had a working knowledge of Japanese, there were at least 100,000 Japanese who had a working knowledge of English!
The earliest move toward serious Japanese language instruction in the Navy appears to have been in 1907, when the Bureau of Navigation recommended the assignment of two or three officers to be instructed in the language. The final endorsement by the President of the General Board, “regards it as very desirable.” Japan had just roundly trounced great Russia. “The importance of Japan as a naval power,” continued the General Board’s letter, “renders it expedient that a certain number of officers of the U. S. Navy should be able to speak and translate the Japanese language. As an example of the importance of such language study, it appears from reliable sources that during the recent Russo-Japanese War the Japanese derived advantage on various occasions from their ability to interpret intercepted wireless messages between Russian ships, while the Russians were unable to translate those of the Japanese.”
The bold signature beneath the endorsement was that of George Dewey, Admiral of the Navy.
In spite of the fact that regular Navy officers had since 1920 at last begun to follow Admiral Dewey’s recommendation, the total number of those trained up to 1940 did not exceed 30. And, as of December 1940, only 16 were regarded as fully proficient in spoken and written Japanese.
Early Japanese language officers frequently stated that the selection was haphazard. Certainly the instruction for the three-year course at Tokyo was casual. Each officer was given a 50-dollar monthly allowance and told to find his own teacher. Although the students thus enjoyed nearly full independence in their methods, choice of abode, and mode of living, there was one strong incentive to heave around; failure of a thorough semi-annual examination by U. S. Embassy language experts held for laggards the threat of a quick return to pacing the bridge at sea.
Some time around 1925, several students began to praise one teacher, Naganuma. Soon, he had all the Navy students and, by 1937, he had trained a staff of 15 teachers, with an office in the basement of the U. S. Embassy. Naganuma’s mimeographed sheets formed the basis for the World War II crash program set up in the United States at Boulder, Colorado.
Between March and June 1941, the Navy, feeling the hot wind from the Far East, had built up a file of 600 individuals who claimed to have a useful knowledge of Japanese. On checking, it was found that 56 had some slight knowledge and the rest would have been hard put if asked to order a bowl of sukiyaki in the native tongue.
With a quarter of a million first or second generation Japanese in the United States, it would have seemed logical to expect no difficulty in immediately assembling large numbers of efficient translators. With a few notable exceptions, such was by no means the case. The mainspring of U. S. Navy language instruction in World War II, A. E. Hind- marsh, then a Commander, U. S. Naval Reserve, states that
The Nisei [second generation Japanese] were limited in usefulness, much handicapped by lack of educational background for this type of work, which calls for initiative and judgment. They required constant checking, suffered in many cases from psychological handicaps and all too frequendy were short on English and/or Japanese.
The classic boner was the Marshall Islands proclamation, translated into alleged Japanese by a Nisei in Honolulu and found so full of errors, both grammatical and otherwise as to make the signer [Admiral C. W. Nimitz] appear ridiculous.
There was literally nothing with which to prime the pump. The handful of professional Japanese language instructors then in the United States consisted largely of the type who specialized in placid contemplation of the navel, interspersed with sessions of the tea ceremony, and bouts of flower arranging.
The first language instruction at the Harvard-Yenching Institute in Cambridge failed to orient the instructors toward military affairs, and the course there was soon discontinued. A concurrent and more satisfactory course had been set up at the University of
California at Berkeley, but was wrecked a-borning by the enforced evacuation of all Japanese from California, which included the instructors. It was thus that the Naval School of Oriental Languages was set up at the University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado.
By 1944, the indefatigable Commander Hindmarsh had interviewed 3,500 applicants, enrolled 915 (32 per cent Phi Beta Kappas), and had, according to Admiral W. F. Halsey, “provided one of the most important training programs in existence—among the most valuable contributions to the success of naval operations in the Pacific.”
Hindmarsh was racing not only against time; he was also facing the keen competition of other agencies for talent. “It seems,” he complained, “that the Army representative is deliberately staging rallies in each and every city to which I am going, and that these rallies are arranged so as to precede my arrival by four or five days. Considerable pressure is being brought to bear on the students, particularly first-rate ones.”
Aside from protecting his flank against the U. S. Army, interviewing thousands of applicants, and beating the bushes for competent instructors, Hindmarsh also found himself adjudicating an occasional international problem. “The British Admiralty Delegations,” wrote Hindmarsh in a memo to the barracks OinC at Boulder, “has unofficially called our attention to what has become a cause celebre in local circles, namely, the present status of Catt’s beard.” (Lieutenant Catt was a British naval officer student.) “I am informed that you have directed him to shave it off. The British representative here would very much like to have Catt keep his beard. This is a practical matter which derives from the fact that after an officer grows a beard he appears bearded in all his identification papers. I agree with you that the beard looks odd and probably attracts attention, but I suppose people will get used to it. Unless you feel that the situation is really causing harm to the efficient operation of the course, it may be well to let Catt hold his beard in the interests of amicable Anglo-American relations.”
There was a striking informality about the assignment of a naval officer to the prewar Russian language course—perhaps more so than to the Japanese. In June 1935, I was ordered to report to the 4th Regiment, U. S. Marine Corps, at Shanghai, for instruction in the Russian language. “Come back at least every three months and tell us where you’ve been,” said the colonel.
Equally informal were the arrangements for instruction, left wholly up to the student. It appeared logical to me to diversify my vocabulary as well as economize—no stipend was furnished for books or instructor. I entered an advertisement in a Shanghai Russian-language newspaper: “Young American wishes to exchange English language instruction for Russian.” In three days I dropped in for a tally of results.
“Thank God you have come for your replies,” said the desk man at the Shanghai Sunrise, “else I should have had to rent a small warehouse to hold them!”
It took six rewarding weeks to check out all the respondents, some of whom had clearly misinterpreted my motives. By this time, it seemed logical to escape the blistering summer heat of Shanghai by following the more affluent of the Russians who for business or pleasure could afford to spend the summer in Tsingtao, on the sea.
“There is no one in the regiment qualified to examine you at your midpoint of the course,” said the colonel on my return in the fall, “so perhaps you will be good enough to write out an assessment of your progress and I will have it forwarded to Washington.”
The colonel continued, “As far back as 1931, when the first Russian student, Captain David Nimmer, U. S. Marine Corps went up to Harbin, the State Department was skittish about the whole thing. ‘Perhaps Riga, Latvia, would be a better place,’ they said. ‘Then there will be no undesirable inference as to U. S. interest in the U.S.S.R.’s operation of the Chinese Eastern Railway across Manchuria or of Japanese operations.’ Now they are toying with the idea of making it out of bounds for our military. If you want to see it you had better get cracking!”
The Chief of Staff, Asiatic Fleet, had no objections. “You don’t have a diplomatic passport,” he said, over a cup of coffee in his cabin, “because of a quid pro quo with the Japanese which includes their language students staked out in California conveniently overlooking our major naval bases. If you get caught doing something you shouldn’t, we can’t help you. Keep your eyes open, don’t write anything down and leave your gun and camera in Shanghai!”
A scruffy little Russian tapped on my hotel room door while I was still shaking the snow from my overcoat and getting my breath after the frigid ride from the railroad station.
“Zachem vwi priyekhaly?—Vy haff you kom?” He had identified himself as an agent of the Japanese police.
“I have come to study Russian.” We dropped into that language.
“But why did you come to Manchuria—to Harbin?”
I explained that there were said to be 50,000 Russians in Harbin. It was better for my purposes than Shanghai, where the 20,000 or so Russians all were more anxious to learn English than to teach me Russian.
“Can you show me some of your notebooks? Why do you want to study Russian anyway?” I pointed out a quotation in my notebook. “Listen to what our first great naval leader had to say,” I told him.
“It is by no means enough,” John Paul Jones had written to the Naval Committee of Congress, “that an officer of the Navy should be a capable mariner . . . He should not only be able to express himself clearly and with force in his own language, both with tongue and pen, but he should also be versed in French and Spanish.”
“If Jones were living now, he probably would include Russian.” I said. “Anyway, I like Russians, Russian music, and vodka!” The police agent broke into a friendly grin and lowered himself into a chair. He accepted one of my cigarettes and seemed satisfied with my bona fides.
“It is necessary to meet some nice girls in order to practice your Russian!” he said with animation. “And in a few weeks it will be 20 degrees of frost. You will need a fur coat. I will help you with these things!”
In John Paul Jones’s setting down of the attributes desirable in a naval officer, he made no reference either to feminine help or the usefulness of a fur coat. However, in view of Jones’s later service in the navy of Catherine the Great, it seemed not at all unreasonable that were he now about, he would look favorably on these sensible logistic arrangements in my case.
Thus began the formal education of the last U. S. Navy Russian language student in the Far East. It had been decided that Riga, Latvia, offered less opportunity for embarrassing involvement. At the end of my year, I took the Trans-Siberian railway across the Soviet Union to continue the course in Riga.
One might conclude that Riga’s climate was less than salubrious; of the seven who finished the course there, three were shortly afterward retired for physical disability. Of the 15 total who studied Russian in either China or Riga, six later served as assistant naval attaches in the Soviet Union and one in Yugoslavia. The program had earned its keep.
Of the approximately 15 Chinese language students who had been assigned.to Peking’s three-year course, perhaps the best known to the public is the late Colonel Evans “Gung Ho” Carlson, U. S. Marine Corps, the wartime Pacific island raider who learned his tricks from the Chinese Communists. Carlson was not a formal student. His Chinese lore was accumulated during four months in Mao Tse-tung’s otherwise sealed-off northwest sanctuary. His “Gung Ho” battle cry, which has since been broadly accepted in the vocabulary of American slang, is a Communist party slogan meaning, “work together,” a fact which would no doubt shock many of its innocent American users if they only knew.
At the outset of World War II, Colonel James McHugh, U. S. Marine Corps, a star Peking alumnus, was naval attaché in China, where his close personal friendship with the Chiangs gave him opportunities not open to U. S. State Department officials.
At the same time, Colonel William L. Bales, another Chinese alumnus from the U. S. Marines, was Chief of the Far Eastern Division of the Office of Naval Intelligence. His oft-repeated unconditional prediction in 1944 that the Communists would soon take over all China was viewed with considerable amusement by some of the Washington “experts” of those optimistic days.
Although, as mentioned earlier, only 16 of the ex-Tokyo students were considered fully qualified in 1940, their contribution to the war effort was out of all proportion to their modest number. Mathematicians cracked the codes, but it was the little band of professional regular Navy Japanese linguists, with their knowledge of Japanese psychology who made sense out of the Japanese messages.
The most valuable single piece of military property in the Far East at the beginning of the War, according to Admiral T. C. Hart’s turnover notes to Vice Admiral W. A. Glass- ford, was Fleet Intelligence Officer, Lieutenant Commander Redfield Mason, a Japanese expert. “Burn the files, safeguard the codes and get Mason out!” were the thumbnail final instructions of Commander South-West Pacific’s chief of staff on the eve of Java’s fall.
In Honolulu, Lieutenant Commander E. T. Layton, Admiral Nimitz’ Japanese expert, manned one end of a hot line that led to Admiral King’s Japanese ear, Commander William Sebald, in Washington.
This remarkable man, Sebald, recalled to the Navy at the outbreak of war, had resigned from the Navy in 1930, shortly after completing the Japanese course. Married to the brilliant and beautiful half-Japanese daughter of a British lawyer-resident of Japan, Sebald graduated in law in the United States and returned to Japan to take over his father-in- law’s practice. In this unique position the Sebalds came to know on close personal terms a great many of Japan’s top echelon businessmen and statesmen. They returned to the United States before the outbreak of war to escape the obviously gathering storm. Sebald in the Navy Department and Mrs. Sebald in O.S.S. were thus in a position to supply much valuable information of broad scope. They returned to Japan after the War, Sebald eventually rising to the rank of ambassador.
One of the best of the Japanese linguists, the late Rear Admiral Ellis M. Zacharias, U. S. Navy, was singled out for praise by a man who customarily gave it sparingly. “I want to congratulate you,” said Fleet Admiral King, “on your good work in making the Japanese see the light and bringing surrender!”
The 14 broadcasts that Zacharias made directly to the Japanese people in 1945 were based on a knowledge of their psychology and language that only years of sitting around a hibachi in kimono and split-toed socks could give. It was this same sort of intimate knowledge of Japanese character and friendship with such people as Admiral Kichisaburo Nomura and many other Japanese naval officers that led Zacharias in March 1941, to warn Admiral H. E. Kimmel. He told the then CinC U. S. Fleet that in his view, Japan would open hostilities with an air attack on our Fleet without declaration of war. The attack would be on a weekend, probably Sunday morning, by launching planes from carriers so they could fly downwind from a spot as far away as possible in order to facilitate the escape of the ships of the attacking force. This spot, Zacharias reminded him, was usually in the northern sector.
It was this same sort of knowledge, laboriously gained over a long period—of both the language and the people—that made the then Captain S. B. Frankel the uniquely invaluable chief of our north Russian outpost during four wartime years. Frankel had been on the vodka-and-borsch circuit in China and the Baltic states for years. He knew the Russkaya dusha—the Russian soul—as well as Mason and Bales and Zacharias and Sebald knew the Oriental. The measure of Frankel’s excellence was his receipt of the distinguished service medal from the United States at the same time he received a proposal from Arctic explorer Admiral Ivan Papanin that he come back to the Soviet Union after the War to advise the Red Navy on protocol and good manners in their clubs and wardrooms.
Modestly tucked among the meager ranks of the Navy’s prewar foreign experts were the students of engineering in Germany and of meteorology in Norway. The students were required to have a working knowledge of German; the courses were in that language. It was not until 1936 that a course satisfactory to the Navy in meteorology was set up , in the United States—at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The course was also in German, as all the available texts were in that language.
Of the German alumni, perhaps the best known is Captain A. H. (Speedy) Graubart, U. S. Navy, the colorful, dynamic man who brought the ex-German cruiser Prinz Eugen to the United States after the War and who, for a considerable time, was “Herr U.S.N.” in occupied Germany.
With the exception of the special courses already enumerated, the Navy’s only source of foreign linguists for almost a hundred years has been the U.S. Naval Academy.
Nineteenth century Naval Academy directories list one Spanish and one French instructor at the Academy. By the time World War II was well underway, the choice of languages open to entering midshipmen had expanded enormously. Portuguese, Russian, German, Japanese, and Italian had been added.
Nobody has ever pretended that the Academy language course made expert linguists of all midshipmen. It has, however, given the Navy a fair percentage in each class who became competent translators, some of whom have been extremely useful in unexpected situations. In reporting the exchange of visits between Soviet and American forces participating in the Geophysical Year, the Washington Post said that, “Lieutenant Seay, who speaks Russian fluently, served as interpreter for the commander of the U. S. force.” Lieutenant (j.g.) Seay was apparently the only officer in this operation who knew any Russian. He was the top Russian student in his class, but had had no language training beyond the Naval Academy.
It is believed that the new language program at the Naval Academy will provide for talented individuals such as Lieutenant Seay to become proficient in the foreign language of their choice.
The U.S. Army is now the executive agency for Armed Forces language instruction. Included in its fold is the language school formerly under the U. S. Naval Intelligence School at Anacostia.* It has continued with largely the same faculty and with a composite administrative staff.
The language skills now available under the Army program are wide enough to embrace any possible world contingency. The effective use of the schools is, of course, up to the various personnel bureaus in their selection of appropriate students. Even more important in the long view is to build up in the services the feeling that language capability is an important asset and that the time spent in acquiring it will not handicap the individual in his hopes for good assignments and promotion.
What are the hurdles the aspiring linguist faces? One arrives at a fair approximation of the relative complexity of certain languages through the time allotted them in 1962 at the Naval Intelligence School at Anacostia. At the top of the list comes Chinese, with 60 weeks. Then Arabic, with 40. Russian, German, Vietnamese, and Turkish are equated at 36 each, Portuguese at 22, and French and Spanish at 19.
“In order to learn Chinese,” one expert said, “you should take the initial precaution of being born and raised in China.” Dr. Julia Chen, of the Defense Language Institute, puts it succinctly, “Chinese calligraphy is beautiful,” she says, “but very complicated. Each character or word contains a certain number of strokes. Some have as many as 30 strokes. Missing a stroke or a dot in a character or putting them in the wrong places will give an entirely different meaning or no meaning at all!”
No one realizes more than the Chinese themselves the immense complexity of their language, where even the normally simple task of sending a telegram requires entering a code book for a number corresponding to each character, to be decoded at the other end
The monolithic Chinese Communists are in a position to simplify by fiat, in the same drastic fashion as did Kemal Ataturk for Turkish. Thus, they currently are introducing a Romanization of Chinese called “pin-yin,” in writing elementary textbooks and short stories. The work of transformation would be prodigious if carried out in all fields at once, so for the time being, high-level textbooks, scientific works, newspapers and magazines continue to be printed in traditional characters, some of them simplified.
It is clear that a simplification of Chinese will greatly broaden the education of the masses, greatly enhancing the power of the already imposing colossus.
It was my experience during some eight years in China that amateur experiments in learning Chinese generally turned out to be a waste of time. A case in point was a South China Patrol messmate who had worked at the language for six months and offered to translate for the wardroom officers at a Canton restaurant.
The copious quantities of tea and beer which accompanied the feast soon developed our interest in the whereabouts of the men’s room.
“Do not make gestures!” warned our man. “They are very likely to be misinterpreted. I will handle this!” He barked out some orders to the Chinese “boys,” which set off an excited conference and resulted in the departure of several of their number.
“They are probably ashamed of the place and have gone off to police it,” someone wisely suggested.
Increased exhortations as the crisis deepened over the next half hour met with uneasy vagueness on the part of the Chinese, until, when we were almost in extremis, the messengers returned, staggering under the biggest watermelon I had ever seen.
It was shortly after this event that our messmate gave up his Chinese lessons.
One of the grandest old men of my day at the Naval Academy, Paul Lajoie, instructor of French, loved and respected by a generation of midshipmen, once gave me some good advice. “Meester Tolley,” he said, his bright blue eyes a-twinkle, “een the fairst section, the meedsheepmen are zo afraid to make a meestake they say nossing. In the anchor section they do not know enough to say anytheeng. Een your meedle section, you know a leetle sometheeng and most important, you are not afraid to make a meestake! You weel talk to many people in many languages!” And so it has been. Nobody was more surprised, however, than Paul Lajoie, when I returned to the Naval Academy as an instructor of French 11 years later, as a result of the somewhat debatable logic of the Navy Department that if I could speak Russian I could teach French.
For the full enjoyment of a foreign country and its people, at least a small knowledge of the country’s language is unquestionably a requirement.
In May 1961, HIJMS Mikasa, flagship of Admiral Togo at Tsushima, was ceremonially unveiled as a restored national memorial. The following is a translation in part from the great Japanese newspaper Mainichi: “Rear Admiral Kemp Tolley, former Commander Fleet Activities, Yokosuka, was at the Mikasa ceremony. He delivered his greetings and read the congratulatory message of Fleet Admiral Nimitz in crisp Japanese to thunderous applause.”
Those few lines alone repaid me many times over for the toil and effort spent over a little book outrageously misentitled, Japanese in Thirty Hours. The many hours of social chat and banter with tradesmen over the years in Japan had been extra dividends.
Even the austere Charles de Gaulle recognizes the value of a few words of a foreign language at the right moment. What German could fail to be moved when de Gaulle cried, “Das deutsche Volk ist ein grosses Volk/” And with what wild acclaim the Mexicans recently- greeted his short address in carefully enunciated Spanish! A mob, like the great beast it can be, will often turn this way or that with a word—provided you know the right word.
Several of us were enjoying our afternoon canter through the main street of a village in central China during the Sino-Japanese “incident.” My pony brushed the yo-yo pole carried across a coolie’s shoulder, and the coolie spun to the ground, his baskets of coal scattered in the street. In seconds we were hemmed in by a hostile crowd, brandishing poles and spitting out angry words. One of our group spoke fair Chinese. “Aiyah!” he shouted. “Where did you capture the enemy aviator?” He pointed to a small monkey perched on a coolie’s shoulder. The effect was electric; scowls turned to grins and grins to guffaws. The unfortunate fellow with his spilled coal was forgotten. We waved a cheery farewell and parted friends all around.
Not only may one save one’s noggin, but what enjoyment can come from the knowledge of a few ideographs! How many of our pre- World War II sailors took the trouble to find out that when we went “up to China in the springtime” to Tsingtao, via Hongkong and Shanghai, we were going to Green Island, via Fragrant Harbor and Above Sea? That across from Fragrant Harbor was Nine Dragons (Kowloon)? And en route we would pass by Terrace Bay (Taiwan), where now live Generalissimo Chiang Great-rock and his charming wife Soong Beautiful-age. (During the War they had had to retreat from Southern Capital (Nanking) to Double Luck (Chungking), dreaming of one day returning to Northern Peace (Peiping).)
My teacher in Japan, Source-of-the-pine- tree san (Matsumoto) explained to me about Sickle Storehouse (Kamakura), Gods’ Gate (Kobe), Eastern Capital (Tokyo) and Beside- the-Beach (Yokohama). One had to be careful of pronunciation; the Japanese admiral’s aide, Lieutenant Great Bridge (Ohashi), became Lieutenant Honorable Chopsticks if one stressed the “ha” rather than the “o.”
The plethora of homonyms in Oriental names makes visiting cards a virtual necessity to Chinese and Japanese, and equally useful for Messrs. Smyth, Smythe, and Smith. Foreigners choosing suitable names must find ideographs which closely approximate the sound of the real name, but still make sense in the Oriental language. As Japanese cannot pronounce “1,” I, for example, must compromise with “Tori” as a substitute for “Tolley.” But which “tori” shall I put on my card: “Heavenly Gate,” or “Bird”? A former skipper of mine who had a longish first, middle, and last name, all of which he wanted included, turned up with “Mr. Thunder-Over-The- Rice- Fields- And- Also- Doing- Very- Well -1 n- The-Pagoda.” I might add that the description was accurate.
As a closing thought, let us not take too seriously the universality we imagine for English.
In crossing the vast waste of the Soviet Union via the Trans- Siberian during the War, the naval attache, Rear Admiral Jack Duncan, and I became good friends with the old Russian couple who lived in and tended the railway car—made up the bunks, brewed the interminable tea, and held a general proprietary interest. The old babushka appeared one morning with a real treasure, a copy of Pravda—an object of value to a Russian for many purposes in addition to editorial enlightenment.
“For the Comrade Admiral!” she said.
I thanked her and explained that I would pass on her message but never mind the newspaper—the Admiral couldn’t read Russian.
In pithy Siberian peasant colloquial she commiserated, “Ach! The poor old son of a bitch! Illiterate, eh?”
Are too many of us in the future to be held thus illiterate in the view of the hundreds of millions who speak no English? In the years to come, our neighbors will not be determined by geographical proximity, just as today geography has no part in the choice of our enemies.
Communication of ideas in a common language may be the passkey to survival.
* See E. H. Levine, “Defense Language Institute, East Coast Branch,” U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings, March 1964, p. 140.