Word War

WHAT A WORD!--A. P. Herbert--Doubleday, Doran ($2).

Since the days when Don Quixote went out and charged a windmill many a man has gone crusading for his crotchets. In the pages of London's augustly humorous Punch, Alan Patrick Herbert has for years been waging a single-handed combat against four humorless ogres: Prohibition, the Divorce Law, Commercializing the Thames, Bad English. Last week, in What a Word!, he collected his scattered witticisms against the murderers of His Majesty's English, proclaimed a jehad: "I declare a new and ruthless Word War; and I invite all lovers of good words to buckle on their dictionaries and enter the fight, whether on our side or against us. We shall often, we know, become casualties (what a phrase!) ourselves; but this will make us fight more carefully and not less keenly. So, brothers, lay on!"

"Jungle English'' is what Crusader Herbert calls the tangled verbiage so dear to polysyllabic politicians, patriots, businessmen. Many of his horrible examples are taken from the venerable London Times. He translates into Jungle English a passage from the Anglican Catechism ("My duty towards my Neighbour is to love him as myself, and to do to all men, as I would they should do unto me:"), thus: "In connection with my co-citizens a general standard of mutual goodwill and reciprocal non-aggression is obviously incumbent upon me; but a comprehensive delimitation of my obligations might be grouped under four categories. . . ." He does not agree that "one horrible long word is shorter. than two or three good short ones. . . ." When he turns up a particularly odious pomposity he calls it ''this seventeen-letter paper-sore."

U. S. readers may be annoyed to discover that Crusader Herbert ignores U. S. English, tacitly assumes that it is a provincial monstrosity. Of U. S. slang he says "it is one part 'natural growth' and nine parts a nervous disorder. It is St. Vitus's Talk." He opens a big door, then hastily slams it, when he admits: "The step from foul American slang to valuable English idiom is sometimes very short"--then changes the subject. He further weakens his case for Royalist English by attacking the divine right of dictionaries, even the Oxford (but he bows to H. W. Fowler's Modern English Usage). "Modern dictionaries are pusillanimous works, preferring feebly to record what has been done than to say what ought to be done . . . never conclude that because you find a word in a dictionary it must be a good word. That may be a valuable piece of evidence; but your own taste and opinion must be the judges."

Protestant Herbert's taste is not infallible. He anathematizes the verb "to sabotage" but blesses "ticketeer." Few, however, would quarrel with his pointed remarks on "business English." He takes a specimen letter: "We are in receipt of your favour of the 9th inst. with regard to the estimate required for the removal of your furniture and effects from the above address to Burbleton, and will arrange for a Representative to call to make an inspection on Tuesday next, the 14th inst., before 12 noon, which we trust will be convenient, after which our quotation will at once issue." This he rewrites thus in plain English: "Thank you for your letter of May 9th. A man will call next Tuesday, forenoon, to see your furniture and effects, after which, without delay, we will send our estimate for their removal to Burbleton.'' Comments Herbert : "If a typist can save thirty words in one short letter, she can save 3,000 on 100 letters--and that, at 60 words a minute, means 50 minutes. And a big 'store' with 100 typists, each doing 100 letters, could save 300,000 words, which means 5,000 minutes, or 83 hours and 20 minutes--or about a week's work for two typists."

To a man who is "prepared to admit" something, Herbert retorts, "Then why not admit it?" With gallant unawareness that he is fighting for a hopeless cause, he points out that "disinterested" means "impartial," not "uninterested." He insists that the legal term "alibi" cannot mean "excuse." "A boxer called Max Baer, after losing a boxing-match, whispered to the microphone. 'I have no alibi' (which could only mean that he did not intend to show that he was not present at the fight)." "Snob-words" (like "commence" for "begin"') annoy Herbert. Some he fails to mention: "persons" (for "people"), "impractical" (for "unpractical"), "among" (for "between").

The Author started writing for Punch before he began writing letters to the Times, but he has been doing both for most of his 45 years. Though he "took a First" in Jurisprudence at Oxford and was admitted to the Bar, he never practiced law. Instead, he served through the War in the Royal Naval Division, was private secretary to an M. P., then joined Punch's staff. He wrote humorous sketches, novels, revues, comic operas, innumerable letters to the Times protesting against some new invasion of the rights of freeborn Britons. His most passionately promulgated crusade has been his fight for the Freedom of the Thames (for pleasure craft). His battle-cry: the Thames is the heritage of the British race, not the close preserve of the Gas Light & Coke Co. Happily married and the father of one son and three daughters, Crusader Herbert has struck his shrewdest blows against Britain's antiquated divorce laws, to which he gave a thorough trouncing in one of his most serious novels. Holy Deadlock (TIME, Aug. 6, 1934). As Independent Member of Parliament for Oxford (since November 1935) he now has another arena where he can ride his war-horse hobbies.

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