The ultimate prevalence of the Siamese language in all the provinces under Siamese rule, has been inevitable from the start. All governments realize the importance of a uniform language in unifying a people, and have no interest whatever in perpetuating a provincial dialect. The Siamese, in fact, look down with a kind of disdain upon the Lāo speech, and use it only as a temporary necessity during the period of transition. And the Siamese is really the richer of the two by reason of its large borrowing from the Pali, the better scholarship behind it, and its closer connection with the outside world. These two forms of the Tai speech—with a common idiom, and with the great body of words in both identical, or differing only in vocal inflection—have been kept apart chiefly by the fact that they have different written characters. All of the Lāo women and children, and two-thirds of the men had to be taught to read, whichever character were adopted; and they could have learned the one form quite as easily as the other. Had the mission adopted the Siamese character from the start, it would now be master of the educational situation, working on a uniform scheme with the Siamese Educational Department. Moreover, the Siamese language in our schools would have been a distinct attraction toward education and toward Christianity. And thus there would have been available for the North the labours of two or more generations of able workers in the southern mission, from which so far the Lāo church has been mostly cut off. The whole Bible would have been accessible from the first; whereas now nearly half of it remains still untranslated into the Lāo. If the future needs of the Siamese provinces alone were to be considered, it might even be doubted whether it were worth while to complete the translation. When the monks, in their studies and teaching, adopt the Siamese, as it is now the intention of the government to have them do, Lāo books will soon be without readers throughout Siam. When for the young a choice is possible in the matter of such a transcendent instrument of thought and culture as language, all surely would wish their training to be in that one which has in it the promise of the future. These words are written in no idle criticism of the past, and in no captious spirit regarding the present; but with full sense of the gravity of the decision which confronts the mission in shaping its educational policy for those who henceforth are to be Siamese.