Every line of these joyous narratives is worthy of quotation. Mr. Salteena is taken to Court, wearing his evening dress trousers (as he has not any Court knickerbockers) and the Earl of Clincham's second-best cocked-hat. Mr. Salteena, fortunately, makes a favorable impression on the Prince of Wales, and his friend seizes the psychological moment to point out that he 'fancies Court life as a professhon':

Oh dose he said the prince blinking his eyes well I might see.

I suggested if there was a vacency going he might try cantering after the royal barouche said the earl.

So he might said the prince I will speak to the prime Minister about it and let you know.

Ten thousand thanks cried Mr. Salteena bowing low.

Well now I must get along back to the levie announced the prince putting on his crown I have booked a valse with the Arch duchess of Greenwich and this is her favorite tune. So saying they issued back to the big room where the nobility were whirling gaily and the more searious peaple such as the prime minister and the admirals etc were eating ices and talking passionately about the laws in a low undertone.

Bernard's experiences with Ethel are most exciting, and the proposal scene is a veritable gem of romantic literature. They are eventually married in Westminster Abbey. Here is a list of the wedding presents:

Bernard gave Ethel a very huge tara made of rubies and diamonds also two rich braclets and Ethel gave him a bran new trunk of shiny green leather. The earl of Clincham sent a charming gift of some hem stitched sheets edged with real lace and a photo of himself in a striking attitude. Mr. Salteena sent Ethel a bible with a few pious words of advice and regret and he sent Bernard a very handy little camp stool. Ethels parents were too poor to. come so far but her Mother sent her a gold watch which did not go but had been some years in the family and her father provided a cheque for £2 and promised to send her a darling little baby calf when ready.

Mr. Salteena obtained the 'job his soul craved'. soul craved'. . . ‘any day he may be seen in Hyde Park or Pickadilly, galloping madly after the Royal carriage in a smart suit of green velvit with knickerbockers compleat,' and subsequently married one of the maids in waiting, 'by name Bessie Topp.' It is a precious book.

The Morning Post

ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN WAR TIME

BY ERNEST A. BAKER

MOST of those who are solicitous

about the English language take up an entirely conservative attitude. Mere purists, zealous only for correctness, they complain that the war has mangled and distorted English, as the German guns mangled Northeast France, and are afraid that it may never be restored to its old state of health and comeliness. Any sort of change is abhorrent to this type of critic, who enters a conscientious protest against every neologism, and regards the slang which is a natural phenomenon of war as a loathsome epidemic calling for wholesale disinfection. But this is to treat English as a dead language, and the glory of English is that it has always been so magnificently alive. The French, with their instinct for order, submitted for two centuries to the authority of their Dictionnaire de l'Académie, which still exercises a steadying influence, though literary French escaped the fate of classical Latin by easing the yoke when it began to gall. English efforts to standardize the language Johnson's Dictionary, for instance had no such lasting effects. To coerce English is to coerce Englishmen. Our language clings more tenaciously than French to the pristine elements of the vernacular; yet it is far more responsive

to the demands of life and the glamour of adventure. Faithful to the past, it revels in the present, yet seems to be always beckoning to the future. Is it perchance this living quality of English that makes so much of our prose essentially poetical?

The growth of the English language during the nineteenth century, after the close time marked by Dr. Johnson's Dictionary, was more rapid than at any period before. That growth was due in the main to the progress of science and invention. Further, a motley host of words came in from all the vernaculars of the British Empire, and the preference of the language for picturesque variety rather than a classical uniform was shown by the steady uprush of racy, homely, or merely different words from our own dialects. If it be asked what was the special characteristic of the later phase of its growth before the war, the answer would surely be the recognition of slang. Now slang is itself a sign of health and vigor. Often, it is true, a slang expression is used as a lazy substitute for the exact term. But so is the Latin polysyllable; and the making of a short and expressive slang phrase shows more mental alertness than the splicing of '-ational' or '-ismatic' to some overworked Latin or Greek derivative. In the life of individual words the triumph of slang may seem ephemeral. Natural selection works with extreme dispatch in its dealings with slang; the death-rate almost catches up the births. But the words that do outlive the deadly period of infancy thereby evince a rich survival value, and take their place among the lustiest members of the vocabulary. Amid the tremendous discharge of all forms of vital energy called out by a war of such colossal magnitude, the life of the language receives a corresponding stimulus.

War, we know, is the mother of invention. This is the province in which a large output of new words will be looked for with certainty. During the war almost every branch of industry has contributed to the military effort; but the majority of the new technical words, or the words that have made their way from technical terminology into the common language, relate, as would be expected, to the three arms, the land, the sea, and the air services. Names of explosives have usually been fabricated by the straightforward method of combining the names or parts of names of bases, as in ‘amatol' or 'ammonal,' sometimes with the orthodox prefix or suffix, as in 'trinitrotoluene,' which the munitioneer shortened to T.N.T. and the expert called 'trotyl.' Such names as 'ballistite,' 'trional,' and 'filite' reveal their etymology at a glance.

The War Office has not supplied many brand-new words, but it has given the lexicographer plenty to do in illustrating new uses of old ones. Its chief exploit was to make the word 'tank' historical. This was used in official correspondence as a covering word for the engines of war destined to have such epoch-making results, but word and thing proved to be inseparable. On the other hand, the War Office can hardly be congratulated on two verbs applied to the transport of troops by motor-vehicles, 'debus' and 'embus.' As in the past, the larger proportion of our military terms have been borrowed from the French, the most military nation in Europe. 'Barrage' has been reimported with a new meaning, and often with a new pronunciation. Fougasse,' 'boyau,' 'camion,' 'banquette' (firing-step), 'liaisonofficer,' are novelties. But these have not had the popular success of 'camouflage,' a word that in its substantive, verbal, and metaphorical phases has

met with more wear and tear in a few months than many receive in a century. We adopted the 'soixante-quinzes' as the 'seventy-fives,' a name that has become historical next only to 'tank.' Nor must translated phrases like 'mass of manœuvre' be overlooked, which quickly passed through the hands of the expounder of strategy into the daily paper.

Both the military and the naval word-makers, however, have fortunately made ample use of native resources. Depth-charge,' 'fire-control,' 'mine-field,'

'mine-sweeper,' 'star

shell,' smoke-helmet,' and even 'liquid fire' and 'poison gas,' if not entirely Anglo-Saxon, are offspring of the same ancient instinct that gave us 'wargear,' 'mead-bench,' and 'heathand 'heathstepper. For a well-known method of range-finding the army has the term 'bracketing' and the navy the term 'straddling.'

The compound term makes excellent material for slang, and is freely employed in finding a language for new industries- aerial navigation, for instance. ‘Airbase,' ‘aircraft,' 'airman,' ‘air-mechanic,' air-pocket,' ‘airraid,' ‘air-scout,' ‘airship,' and 'antiaircraft' are now everyday terms. There has been a persevering effort to get 'airplane' adopted, but it seems to have been given up as a bad job. When the thing itself was new and strange, the more erudite 'aeroplane' fitted appropriately. A home-made term does not make the right appeal for an invention verging on the marvelous, and when the invention has become familiar, christening time has gone by. 'Far-writing' or 'distancewriting' would have stood no chance in the early days of telegraphy, though 'wireless' now comes quite natural, as an adjective, a noun, or a verb. 'Aerogram' has been accepted from the French, from which have also come

'fuselage' and 'ballonet.' 'Taube,' 'Fokker,' and 'Gotha,' names of wellknown German warplanes, can hardly be said to be naturalized. What may be called air-lingo comprises such verbs as 'bank' and 'zoom,' the latter obviously onomatopoeic, together with such terms of affection as 'the old bus,' and unmitigated slang, like ‘hickboo' for an air-raid, 'to huff' for 'to kill,' and the humorous 'Archie' for a member of the anti-aircraft force. This 'caught on' from the refrain of a popular song, 'Archibald, certainly not!' referring ironically to the extreme rarity of the authenticated hits. Typical of the technical terms that have become widely current may be noted 'radio' from 'radiotelegram,' a wireless message; 'duralium,' which seems to have ousted the pre-war 'duralumin'; 'tractor-plough' and 'tractor-plane'; and the medical words 'ankylose,' 'anti-tetanic,' 'asepsis,' 'coagulen,' and 'Siamese grafting.' 'Bar' and 'millibar' have appeared in the newspapers with the post-war revival of meteorology. 'Hay-box,' a device used in the new cookery, may. have been introduced before the war, but certainly is not known to prewar dictionaries.

The mortal issues of the time fully account for the abundant literature of that borderland subject, psychic science. Curative treatment based on Freudian theories has also found its opportunities among those afflicted with loss of memory and other nervous disorders due to the accidents of war. Let us cull a few of the terms that may perhaps survive the precarious period of novelty. 'Auto-suggestion' we already knew; but we know it better now from the mere fact that it has a rival in 'psycho-analysis.' 'Cryptoid,' 'hypnoid,' 'mediumistic,' 'to motorize,' 'motricity,' 'telepsychy,' 'cryptopsychy,' and 'parapsychical'

may secure a permanent footing, or may prove to be merely hasty technical makeshifts.

One Freudian term has already made its way into the more refined sort of slang. A 'mental complex' in the language of the alienist described a group of obsessions which is commonly a first symptom of insanity. Roughly, it corresponds to the old phrase 'a fixed idea.' Without the adjective, 'a complex' is now a polite euphemism for a bee in one's bonnet, and hints at the general view that most of us are more or less insane.

The Athenæum

THE OVERTHROW OF GERMAN MILITARY PRESTIGE

BY LEON DAUDET

NEXT to the return of Alsace-Lorraine to the mother country, the principal advantage which we have so far drawn from the victory is the overthrow of German military prestige. The fact is patent and undeniable; the French General Staff, when unhindered by the intrigues of parliamentary and democratic politics, overcame the German General Staff. The French school of war conquered the German school of war. Our school conquered twice upon the Marne in counter-offensive and once on the defensive at Verdun. Our Staff overcame the Germans at the first battle of the Marne in spite of the very insufficient preparations which had been made for the battle-insufficiency due, not to the army but to the parliamentary régime. Joffre and Foch outplayed Von Kluck, Falkenhayn, Hindenburg, and Ludendorff. French strategy and tactics have been constantly superior to German strategy and tactics. All the heroism in the world, if put to the service of inferior conceptions of the art

of war, cannot win success. Without doubt, there were certain faults they exist in all wars; but these faults were quickly made good, and in the ensemble, the military prestige, which has shone about the German General Staff since the days of Moltke and our defeat of '70-'71, has passed squarely over to the French General Staff.

A high officer with whom I talked recently, called my attention to the fact that on two particular occasions, on the 5th and 6th of September, 1914, and on the 16th, 17th, and 18th of July, 1918, the advancing German armies allowed themselves to be surprised by an attack on the right flank. As for Ludendorff's famous system of 'pockets,' the military critic of the Matin, Commandant de Civrieux, made at the beginning a masterly study whose conclusions have one and all been verified. Critics of military operations were much ridiculed during the war. Nevertheless, the greater part of their information and their forecasts, which often came to them from the General Staff, were found to be correct. All in all, the French military mind, which bore the principal weight of the war (since the combat was fought upon our territory), outplayed the German military mind. The famous Hindenburg line, which they thought unbreakable, did not hold. It was rather those who declared it unbreakable who were ridiculous.

Up to the 3d of August, 1914, the German machine had a crushing superiority over the French machine. Whatever way one looks at this question, one ever returns to the same point, the German generals made a mess of this campaign, the French generals acted skillfully. Castelnau saved Nancy, Pétain saved Verdun, Foch stopped the Germans on the Yser. In general, as in detail, the German military plan showed itself far inferior

to the French military plan. The succession of defeats swallowed by German armies from the 18th of July to the 11th of November, 1918, is something unique in the military annals of the world. From the 18th of July on, Ludendorff was not able to gain a single serious advantage. Foch struck in with a succession of hammer blows; one needs the word genius to fit this epochal overthrow of an enemy who had arrived almost at the Capitol.

The Imperial German authorities did not wish to understand all at once the enormous importance of the first French victory on the Marne nor the authentic and true word of the second Moltke, 'Sir, sir, the war is lost.'

Nevertheless, beginning here, the Imperial authorities seem to have lost confidence in the final success. The struggle changed its aspect. While the German armies became stationary in the trenches, German finance put in motion treasonable propaganda in the lands of the Allies. The process of massive and brusque attack having failed, the enemy had recourse to 'internal disruption.' This attack from within, this war behind the war did not neglect our military forces; the enemy understood well enough that no success could be possible until this force had been broken. This treacherous and dangerous campaign did obtain certain definite results; the interruption of the offensive of April, 1917, and the mutinies of May and June, 1917. Had not Clemenceau been there on guard, France would have been in the gravest danger. It is the incomparable glory of Clemenceau to have

delivered the French General Staff from the intrigues of politicians who were in a fair way to ruin France, for Painlevé, I insist, and as all the world knows, was but the agent of Caillaux and Caillaux was the agent of the enemy. Let us not forget that it was the prestige of its General Staff and the memory of the military victory of '70-'71 which prepared the way for German economic penetration of France and foreign lands. Finance, industry, commerce, and diplomacy prospered in the shadow of monster cannons and machine guns. They progressed in the confidence that the German nation had, in the superiority of the chiefs of the army, in 'the children of the great Frederick.' How completely they fell down, these 'children of the great Frederick,' even when they had in their hands the material for a swift and striking victory! Their human material held good to the very end in spite of some failures here and there during the three final weeks. That their military glories have faded in the rising sunlight of French military reputation is the fact that bites most cruelly into the pride of the Germans. The nails of the Hindenburg statue are now to be understood ironically, and I await with curiosity the memoirs of Ludendorff.

As for the clause of the Peace Treaty dissolving the German General Staff and all military bodies, it is without value or efficacy as long as German unity continues under the leadership of Prussia. An effect whose cause exists cannot be considered dissolved.

L'Action Française