Walther on loss of German language by American Lutherans

      I have blogged numerous times on this subject, but those blogs used Franz Pieper's comments.  However, I discovered that Walther lamented the loss of the German language even in 1874 before the 2 World Wars!  Walther references the Mennonite emigration from Russia. One may read some history of those people in Wikipedia.  Walther comments in Der Lutheraner, vol. 30 (1874), p. 150, – translation by BTL: 

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German Mother Tongue. The Mennonites who are now immigrating from Russia, where their forefathers emigrated from Germany in the last century, speak German fluently in addition to Russian, to the astonishment of the Germans here. When the reporter of a newspaper expressed his astonishment at this, a man of about sixty said: “Surely we will not forget our mother tongue?” — Thus speaks a Mennonite, to whom his religion cannot make the German language particularly valuable, since the number of Mennonite writings in our language is very small; what a disgrace it is, therefore, for many local German Lutherans, who not only look on indifferently as their children lose their mother tongue, but, who even do everything that their children must lose it, by sending them, instead of German, to English schools!     W. [Walther]”

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      Walther lamented that Lutherans were less rigorous in retaining their "mother tongue" than the Mennonites.  In hindsight we can see that Walther was correct to promote the German language, because the loss of the language by the descendents in the 20th Century has devastated theological and devotional reading.  And 2 World Wars have made any return to German to be practically impossible, except for the few who choose this language.  Thank God for the Internet that has given us tools to not only access the old German Lutheran writings, but also to translate them into our new "mother tongue" – English.  How the Lord has answered my prayer of 25 years ago, that I might be able to read directly from our German Lutheran forefathers.