To most Harvard men, the Committee on Communication sounds vaguely like an R.O.T.C. semaphore unit, or a branch of Western Union; yet the methods of teaching English to foreigners which this group has quietly developed in its house on Kirkland Place are world famous.

Two members of the group, Drs. Ogden and Richards, began the work years ago with their now famous Meaning of Meaning. In the years that followed, Dr. Richards became known as one of the world's foremost logicians and literary critics. Dr. Ogden continued his study of meaning, and whether he called it semantics of othology, many scholars regarded it as the empty day-dreaming of a deluded coterie. But orthology proved to have a practical application when it cold logic was focused on the English language. Dr. Ogden discovered that effective communication in our language is possible with only 850 Basic English words. With this list and a few streamlined simplifications of grammar, foreigners were soon learning English in a fraction of the time demanded by the tedious formal approach. Then they could make phenomenal progress in learning the most advanced words and idioms. Realizing the tremendous implications of these experiments, the old partners, Ogden and Richards set up in 1939 the Committee on Communication in a frame house at 9 Kirkland Place. The Committee, under Dr. Richards, went on studying meaning, while Dr. Ogden led the Orthological Institute in further refinements of the Basic English method. Ingenious charts for associating pictures and simple words were drawn up with the help of enthusiastic American and foreign students, and the group became widely known in a very short time. Maxim Litvinoff and his wife were so impressed by the Basic approach to English that they learned it and introduced it into the schools in Russia. And Massachusetts successfully employs Basic English in teaching our language to that section of its population which is foreign born. The Committee's high point thus far came when it saved a Pan-American friendship scheme by rushing post-haste to the University to North Carolina and teaching our language in six weeks to 120 foundering South American exchange students.

Recently the Committee became a part of still another Commission for the study of English. But it is still growing and knows that there need be no fear of the future, since the group has Bernard Shaw's word for it that Basic English versions of Shavian masterpieces surpass the originals in many places.