mentioned in the circular of April 4 was ratified, as were also the plans for the publication of a quarterly journal to be known as Hispania. These committees were: Membership, Dr. Alfred Coester, Chairman, 17 members; Nominations, Professor John D. Fitz-Gerald, Chairman, 16 members; Constitution, Professor Ventura Fuentes, Chairman, 15 members; Publications, Professor A. M. Espinosa, Chairman, 12 members. Those slated in the circular of April 14 as temporary officers were formally elected as such, to hold office till January, 1918. They were: President, Lawrence A. Wilkins, Board of Education, New York City; First VicePresident, Professor Rudolph Schevill, University of California; Second Vice-President, Professor John D. Fitz-Gerald, University of Illinois; Third Vice-President, Professor Charles P. Wagner, University of Michigan; Secretary-Treasurer, Dr. Alfred Coester, Commercial High School, Brooklyn, N. Y. The Association elected as the two Honorary Presidents Mr. Archer M. Huntington of New York and Mr. Juan C. Cebrián of San Francisco.

The next meeting was a short business session held in connection with the meeting of the local Association on May 19, when the first declamation contest for High School students of Spanish was held. It was then voted to take as a name for the society The American Association of Teachers of Spanish. The temporary president was authorized to appoint the editors of Hispania and to take the steps necessary for carrying out the plans of the organization. He announced the appointment of Professor Espinosa of Leland Stanford Junior University as editor and reserved appointment of others till a later date.

On May 21, 1917, a circular stating the purposes of the new National Association and inviting those interested to become members was sent out by the Committee on Membership to about 2850 teachers of Spanish in the high schools and colleges of the land. Of this list, necessarily a defective one, about 600 persons have applied for membership, either annual or life, and it is believed that within a year we shall be able to count a round thousand in our ranks. This is a remarkable start. This success would seem to indicate that the Association has been formed at the "psychological moment" and that all teachers of Spanish realize that an excellent opportunity is offered for concerted unity in an educational field

which is growing so rapidly that its unorganization threatens to become disorganization and confusion.

We are under a debt of gratitude, which it will be difficult to discharge, to Mr. Huntington and to Mr. Cebrián for most generously providing us with funds with which to effect an organization. Expenses have been unavoidably large, chiefly for postage. and printing, and without the help of these gentlemen our efforts would have been greatly hampered if not entirely nullified. To both of them the temporary president wishes at this time to express also his hearty thanks for many constructive suggestions and advice. We are peculiarly fortunate in having as our Honorary Presidents men so far-famed as patrons of things Hispanic.

To the members and especially to the chairmen of the four committees our thanks are due for many long hours of work and unflagging enthusiasm. As for our journal Hispania, it is being launched under the general editorship of probably our most enthusiastic fellow-member, Professor Espinosa. He is assuming a heavy responsibility, all for the love of the work. He deserves our heartiest co-operation and help. He and all of us are very glad that he will have associated with him as Consulting Editors two of our greatest Hispanists, Professor Fitz-Gerald and Professor Ford. And the Board of Associate Editors will, beyond a shadow of doubt, help form and support with unfailing zeal and co-operation the editorial policy set for Hispania. Both the high school and the college field are well represented in that Board.

So much as a resumen of the past. What of the future with its hopes and plans?

We stand at the threshold of new things in modern languages in the school and college world. Never before in the United States has there been in the field of modern languages such a breaking of the idols, such a groping for readjustment of ideas, such a need of new nation-wide orientation as that which we see at present. And in all this flux and shifting there stands forth at least one great salient fact, the trend toward the study of Spanish in all our high schools and colleges.

For generations German has, due to tradition and propaganda, been the major foreign language in our curricula. It is losing, for

obvious reasons and for reasons not so obvious, its predominant place and there are those who believe that it should not and never again will occupy that strong place it once held in our program of study. French, the language of that great republic so long maligned as decadent and unworthy, has like the nation which speaks that language, risen to a place of greater respect and popularity than it has ever before occupied in the minds of citizens of the United States. It will be taught more and more in our schools. But it has remained for Spanish to make such strides in growth as have never been made before by any language. The demand for opportunities to study Spanish equal to those now offered in French and German is tremendous and growing every day. This creates a situation of very great interest to all modern language teachers. and one that is of surpassing moment to us teachers of Spanish.

It is fitting to ask at this point, what has caused the marked. renascence of interest in Spanish during the past four years? An examination into the underlying reasons will be of help in determining the stability and worth of the movement.

In the first place, the renascence has been due to stimulus from the business world. The opening of the Panama Canal, the demand in South America since August, 1914, for our capital and the much greater need here than before of South American raw material,hides, sugar, coffee, etc.,-the Pan-American Financial Congress, the establishment of the International High Commission, its trip through South America and its labors toward systematization of bank discounts, credits, consular invoices, etc., the establishment in Hispanic America of nine branches of the National City Bank of New York authorized by the Federal Reserve law of the United States, the growth in shipping facilities between our ports and those of South America, as, for instance, the recent establishment of a direct line of five steamers between New York and Valparaiso,all of these things are either causes or effects of the, for us, rather well-concerted effort to "capture the South American trade." It is true, of course, that much of the success we are enjoying in our increased commerce with South America is due to peculiarly favoring conditions. War has broken down the competition which we would have otherwise met. But the fact remains that all these

activities with Spanish-speaking lands have served to a marked degree to stimulate in our land the study of Spanish.

man,

A second factor is the prejudice that exists against Gera natural phenomenon accompanying war against Germany. This prejudice has, whether rightly or wrongly conceived, operated to encourage the study of Spanish and, in lesser degree, French.

Thirdly, we may have been encouraged to study Spanish in the very erroneous belief that "Spanish is easy." No language is easy to acquire; Spanish least of all among the several Romance languages.

Fourthly, many are beginning to realize, though they have been slow to do so, that we Anglo-Saxons may possibly, after all, have overestimated our "superiority" and underestimated the Iberian and Ibero-American nations, their past glories and their present capabilities in exploration, in commerce, in art, in literature, in politics. Among the many wrong conceptions of other people which the present war is serving to drive out of the heads of us North Americans, so proud in the past of our "splendid isolation," is the one that we are "superior" to our fellow-Americans in the republics to the south of us. As a result, we are interesting ourselves in Spanish and Portuguese.

The situation thus created we teachers of Spanish must look upon with mingled feelings,-with joy that at least Spanish is obtaining its equal place with other languages in the curricula of our institutions, and at the same time with deep concern because of the unpreparedness that exists to meet the demand for instruction in Spanish.

Our joy we can truthfully say is not a selfish one, is not merely because the favoring winds have veered in our direction, but it is based in the fact that our citizens are, consciously or unconsciously, laying, by their desire to study Spanish, the most inspiring and the most secure basis for real Pan-Americanism, for a reciprocal, sympathetic understanding between the republics of the new world. As President Butler of Columbia University has so well put it-"It will not be possible for the people of the United States to enter into closer relations with the peoples of the other American republics until the Spanish language is more generally spoken and written by educated persons here, and until there is a fuller appre

ciation of the meaning and significance of the history and civilization of those American peoples which have developed out of Spain."

Eighteen of the twenty-one nations of the New World speak Spanish. That language is their only medium in commerce, education, religion, daily life. Shall those fifty millions in eighteen. nations be compelled to learn English in order to establish the "closer relations" referred to as so necessary, or shall the one hundred millions of our nation be expected to give a reasonable amount of time and effort to the acquirement of Spanish? English is at present studied by proportionately greater numbers in Spanishspeaking lands than is Spanish in the United States. We should at least make half of the advances on the way toward a complete understanding between the Americas.

Our concern at the present time is as marked as our joy. And for this reason: the number of teachers really well prepared to teach Spanish is lamentably small when compared with the demand for such teachers. Outside of the Far West and the Southwest of the United States few are those who possess a ready conversational ability in Spanish and who are therefore equipped to impart a correct pronunciation to students and to give oral practice to the extent and in the manner required by the most widely accepted and up-todate methods of language teaching. The belief held even by some teachers of Spanish that the language is easy to pronounce or easy to understand, easy to read or to write, is frequently accompanied by the weirdest sort of pronunciation and general knowledge of the language on the part of the pupils of these teachers. Principals of high schools and superintendents of instruction, in common with thousands of educated North Americans, have shown either a marked ignorance of what Spanish has to offer the North American youngster or have shown a kind of dilettantism toward the teaching of the language that is at once exasperating, discouraging and thoroughly disorganizing. Add to all this the fact that the supply of suitable textbooks in some of the work in Spanish is as yet either inadequate or insufficiently varied or ill-adapted to the purposes for which they were planned, and then one has probably a fairly complete picture of the dark side of the situation.

But these hindrances should not be and will not be insuperable. Great numbers of teachers are preparing themselves for the teach