began to lose ground and declined as rapidly as it had risen and was soon forgotten. Intrinsic defects of the language, which became apparent at the congress of Volapükists in Paris in 1889, and failure of its advocates to come to an understanding as to the way to amend them furnished the causes for its downfall.
Esperanto was devised by the Russian physician Dr. L. Zamenhof of Warsaw while Volapük was still at its height and published in 1887. Its progress was very slow until the Frenchman Marquis L. de Beaufront, an eminent philologist, began to take interest in it about 1890. He became the second father of Esperanto by creating a real language out of the crude sketch of its inventor, and to him more than to anybody else is due the fact that Esperanto became known in every civilized country gaining everywhere great numbers of adherents many of whom still swear faithful allegiance to it.
Esperanto has attained a high degree of perfection and in many respects it excels all artificial languages preceding it and those which were devised as a result of the disintegration of Volapük. Because of its good features competent students of the problem of an international language praised and advocated it. They were well aware that it contained also substantial defects and pointed them out. But they recognized that these imperfections could be remedied and hoped that the necessary reforms would be introduced soon enough to prevent the language from deteriorating through its defects to such an extent as to be beyond correction.
The proper opportunity for starting the reforms of Esperanto came in 1907. In October of this year the Committee of the International Delegation for the Adoption of an International Auxiliary Language convened in Paris for the purpose which had brought the Delegation into existence at the Paris exposition in 1900. This purpose was to procure to the civilized nations an auxiliary international language either by indorsing one of the existing artificial languages or by constructing a new one if none of the existing ones were found adequate. The Committee composed
of scholars of international reputation examined many arti-
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