Ces Americains!

Stars & Stripes, which already had three French editions, has started a new one at Dijon in Burgundy. Inspired by its appearance, Editor Henri Anger of La Bourgogne Republicaine rushed into print with a rapturous front-page disquisition on the methods of U.S. journalism. Excerpts:

"Lord, how those austere offices of Le Progres have changed! The typewriters fire like so many machine guns, the teletype rolls off news at a dizzy pace. You have to go back to prewar American films to match the hectic rhythms which fairly take away the breath of a French spectator.

"American and French newspapers have this in common, that one works on them more feverishly and in joyous disorder. But the resemblance stops there. French journalists belong to the era of the pen, a pair of scissors and two good legs. American newspapermen, on the other hand, are veritable pianists. They play their typewriters as Menuhin plays his violin. Some of them from time to time use a pencil, but it is only to begin an exercise in virtuosity: the writing of a headline. The headlines in Stars & Stripes are strictly G.I. It is impossible to translate them satisfactorily into French.

"Conciseness, which is an article of faith to them, leads American journalists to invent new words, to forge a vocabulary which lends a most vivid new hue to their argot. In this way the American language is transformed and enriched under this vigorous impulse.

"The growth of language in the United States shows without a doubt that the American, contrasted with the Frenchman, does not live on bread and wine but is nourished on milk, meat and newsprint. . . ."

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