John Dyneley Prince

“ The present War has placed the United States on a most enviable commercial footing, and this is especially true in connection with the possible future trade relations with the great Russian Empire. Far-seeing business men all over the country have already begun to realize this fact with respect to Russia and are, therefore, encouraging young men to take up the study of the Russian language. ”

“ At the end of two semesters of such work, it has been found that the students who apply themselves to this rather exigent method are well able not only to converse on simple topics, but also to read a newspaper in Russian and to enjoy the easier forms of Russian literature.
With a force of men trained in this way to an independent use of the Russian vernacular, the United States would be in a position, both during and after the War, to avoid all foreign agents and middlemen in mutual trade, and thus to establish an American sytem of credit with Russia. ”

“ Russian is not like some other languages. It is impossible to learn to speak and write in it intelligibly without a thorough comprehension of its very complicated grammatical system. Aside from the fact that the noun declensions exhibit a difficult phonetic development with a generally logical system of case-endings running throughout and that the adjectival declensions must be learned as a development distinct from the nouns, the Russian verb presents the greatest difficulty to the non-Slavonic speaking student. ”