which possesses almost as creative and as original a literature as the Greek, and a much richer one than the Latin, and which has this further claim on our attention that it is the language of an imperial people which will sooner or later dominate the political world. Already Russian is the dominant language of 175,000,000 people. In ten years it will be spoken by 200,000,000 people. In 1950 it will be spoken by 300,000,000. Nor must we forget the important fact that Russian is the key to a dozen other Slavonic languages, and especially that it is closely allied to the Bulgarian language, and to the Serbian language, which itself is destined to become one day the language of an imperial federation, extending from Dalmatia and Croatia in the West to the Iron Gates in the North and Salonica in the South.
Finally, it has to be kept in mind that Slavonic or ecclesiastical Russian is the common sacred language of all the Greek Orthodox Slav nations.
II
The Russian language is one of the most ancient of European languages. The structure and morphology of its grammar, as well as its
