intergiossa. By Lancelot Hogben. (Pelican Press. 9d.)
MR. LANCELOT HOGBEN is fast qualifying as Public Crank No. After his Mathematics for the Million, a sort of assimilable mathe- matical margarine (whose lack of vitamins was however exposed by Professor G. H. Hardy in his brilliant Mathematician's Apologia), he produced Science for the Citizen, mixing tendentious propaganda with information in a form flattering to the ignorant, and now he is trying to add another artificial language to the still-born company of Volapuk, Esperanto, Interlingua, Novial, &c., which he calls lnterglossa. Mr. Hogben is not only an old-fashioned utilitarian born out of his time but he has a Philistine contempt for any sort of pure intellectual or aesthetic activity—in short, for creation of any kind. But he is undoubtedly well-endowed to provide the "opium of the suburbs," as is shown, for example, in his sub-title for this book, which reads: " A Draft of an Auxiliary for a Democratic World Order, Being an Attempt to Apply Semantic Principles to Language Design "—a pretentious piece of jargon likely to impress most those too illiterate to know that it means nothing more than " Sketch for a world language." Mr. Hogben is a sort of Mrs. Eddy of science, who seems to believe that a world language would abolish war, just as Mrs. Eddy thought to rid the world of pain by her particular brand of Christianity made easy and non- sensical.
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