In Russia

Illiteracy, like all evils, is sometimes a blessing. So thinks the Russian Ministry of Education, at all events. Of late the Ministry took the Russian alphabet in hand, examined it for superfluous members, pruned here, excised there, threw five letters out bodily, published a new, curtailed alphabet which shortens the written Russian language by one-twelfth and makes its spelling "twice as logical." It was pointed out that had not illiteracy abounded in Russia, the Ministry would have encountered the same difficulty faced by the late Theodore Roosevelt

and other advocates of simplified spelling in the U.S. --namely, that of making a whole people unlearn the teachings of its childhood. Last week's issue of Science (news pamphlet for scientists) contained comment by Dr. John P. Harrington, ethnologist of the Smithsonian Institution(Washington, D. C). Said he:

"The changes should effect a saving about four years out of the education every Russian child and they reduce the cost of printing in Russia something like 15 million dollars a year.

'For instance, the Russians were " two kinds of 'e.' One word might require the variety of 'e' known as 'ye' and another would call for the 'e' known as 'yat.' . . .

"The question was raised in the Ministry of Education of introducing the Roman alphabet, which is the one we use in writing English, instead of the modified Greek character in which Russian has always been written. Psychologists claim that the Roman small letters, with their projections above and below the line, present a contour more readily grasped by the eye than the 'solid blocks of Russian lower case characters. Thus MAJILHHK which

the Russian word for 'boy,' in Russian type is a rectangle, while 'boy' in Roman type has projecting signals. But the advocates of retaining and

'scientificizing' the Russian alphabet

prevailed."