THE KING'S ENGLISH

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2984, 23 January 1917, Page 3

THE KING'S ENGLISH

SOME RECENT MUTILATIONS. Writing about the decadence, of the King's English, the "Athenaeum" says: Wo must enter a vigorous protest against the offensive terms which have passed into current use during tho ivar. "Combing out"—a particularly disgusting expression—made its appearance fairly early. Then came tho "dilution" of labour. After which many of us were "rounded up." And now the newspapers are full of tho "manpower" of the nation. These metaphors, to say the least, are unhappy; but the worst feature about /them is lie philosophy on which they' are based. "Combing out" and "rounding up" mako tho general run of men into something comparable with vermin and cattle. The terms "dilution" and "man-power" imply, that the people of this •country are nothing better than mechanical puppets. These terms appear to have originated with the bureaucrats.' "To be availed of" has the imprimatur of | the_ "Daily News"; and the "Liverpool Daily Post" admits "the conscience clause could bo availed of." Ono might cavil at "tne Turkish fortress at tho mouth of the Gulf of Aria, the gauntlet of which two gunboats safely ran last week." What of tho "subscription agent (American), who is usually to he bswared of," and 1 Oscar Wilde's friend, who "was too clever and too pvnical to be really fond of" ? Prepositions are such prickly things that Netta Syrotfc leaves them out wholesale —"a furious discussion as to which restaurant she should lie taken to-day," and "He walks westward in search of a place to dine." .To read the newspapers, magazines,, and popular writer with an eye for tho humours of their blundering is a gloomy kind of amusement, but such comic relief is tho only relief we have if we feel any concern at tho relapse of English. Better enjoy the comedy of it than-bo bored with the monotony _ and tho ugliness. Both these qualities are concentrated, so far as newspaper English is concerned, in tho head lines. Here ■ are four examples rendered palatable by unintended humour from the "Daily News" :—"Train on Fire in Tube—Passengers Alight in -Tunnel." "Horse Impaled on the Hunting Field." "A! I Mare's Nest Exploded." "Siam to tho Rescue—Gift of Bangkok Christians to London Poor." Tho last turned put to have no bearing on either cannibalism or the slave trade. "Earl Dudley and Party Capsized from a Yacht" illustrates ' the ignorant or tho arbitrary distortion of accepted meanings. Yachts sometimes capsize; but more than halfseas must have been running to achieve the effect here so pithily described. "Darwin," "with the germs of evolution seething in his brain," is not a head-line, but a phrase in Hugh Walker's "Literature of the Victorian Era." For it would be unfair to lay all the blame for these outrages on tho purity of English upon tho shoulders of journalism. Exceedingly unfair —for the critic unearths also a sentenco from S. R. Crockett. "His hat was on bis-' head, which he doffed for a moment to Kate Allison and her mothar." The "Tattler," it is said, once gave its readers • portraits of "little girls whom an Act i passed in the reign of George 111 prevents their becoming princesses."-