The language question 1920-1934 : a critical edition of the relevant documents

Abstract

The amount of material on the language question in Malta during the period under study is astonishing. The books and articles dealing with the subject are abundant but unfortunately no attempt has ever been made classify and collect the relevant documents existing in London and Malta. The principal aim of this work is to fill this gap by attempting to collect these documents and present them, as far as possible, in a chronological order. This is followed by a criticism and general evaluation of the documents which tend to give a commentary on the facts, and also attempt to put the documents in their original perspective. Although every effort has been made to collect as many documents as possible, this work does not even pretend to be comprehensive. The evidence on the subject can be classified as verbal and written. Obviously enough, any communications which were carried out verbally, though probably very significant, are inexistent as naturally they were unrecorded. Some written information, like telegrams and other notes, which were normally destroyed after perusal are similarly lost to us, while other documents which are normally preserved have either been unintentionally mislaid or else they have simply evaded the efforts of the author of this work.