Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 September 1898 — Spain's Illiteracy [ARTICLE]

Spain's Illiteracy

Modern languages are unknown in Spain to a degree which has to be realized before it can Le believed. Politicians, statesmen, physicians, journalists, courtiers and even merchants are content with speaking their own sonorous language—and can very seldom express themselves in any other. I have seen Englishmen and Frenchmen in the foreign department of the Central Telegraph office wandering disconsolately hither and thither unable to find a single oliicial conversant, in any degree, with the French tongue. The liberal government of Benor Sagasta, having introduced censorship of foreign telegrams, such as has never been practiced in Russia, was at Its wit’s end to find a censor capable of reading messages written in German, and, finally, it was decided that they should go as they were, unexamined. I frequentlj' saw two Identical telegrams, of which one was In French and the other in. German, handed in at the telegraph office, and on the following day I learned that the French message had been suppressed by the censor and the German telegram transmitted without remark. —Contemporary Review.