Esperanto has nothing to fear from any rival scheme--present, past, or
future.

Of upward of 150 different projects that have seen the light since the
seventeenth century, not one was born with a life worth saving but
Esperanto; not one has ever attained one-hundredth part the power and
vogue and vitality that Esperanto has achieved.

One only of all these schemes has ever come prominently before the
public before Esperanto came into the field, Volapük, and this failed of
its own defects.

One only among some 20 or 30 imitations of Esperanto, namely, Ido,
succeeded for a time in creating a diversion in the Esperanto camp.
If Volapük died of its defects, it is permissible to say that Ido
never lived on account of its numerous authors' everlasting chase
after theoretical perfection, each one having a different opinion--and
changing the same with every wind--as to what constitutes perfection
in every one of a thousand features of a human language. Accordingly,
the Idoists have altered their mock Esperanto a hundred times in six
years, so that no one has been able to keep track of the changes, and
the adherents of the secession themselves have never been able to learn,
speak, and use the language.

During these six years Esperanto has succeeded in establishing itself
and getting a firm hold in every civilized country from China to Peru
and from Greenland to Zanzibar, because it is a live and growing
language, perfect in so far that it is endowed from the start with all
the power of evolution without the need of any internal changes in its
wonderfully simple structure.