The Dominion. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1911. SPELLING AND THE WORLD.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1271, 28 October 1911, Page 4

The Dominion. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1911. SPELLING AND THE WORLD.

"Tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones' —and why not, therefore, political philosophy in spelling? This week's mail brought us the latest issues ol the best newspaper in Britain anc the best newspaper in America; anc both of them—the London Times anc the New York Post— chanced to have leading articles upon spelling. The Times discussed ''Handwriting anc Spelling" in a vein of pleasant protest against the importance the Civil Service Commissioners had by oflirial mandate allotted to correctness in spelling and legibility of "copy" in the Army examinations; the Post, discussing "Spelling and Life," was pleasantly ironical about the people who want to be "broad-minded" in the matter of spelling and everything clsj?. The attitude of the Timcf. is crystallised in the following sentence, which chances to crystallise just the tendency that the Post is attacking: "After all, English spelling is so largely unsystematic, inconsistent, and even arbitrary, that some allowance may well be made for those who are unconsciously impelled to make it more phonetic, and to that extent more logical, than it is." This readiness to forget what English spelling really is,, and involves, is typical of an age that is feverishly anxious to abandon the old standards in every region of life. It is the age which sees men lapsing into crime, and, stricken by the tragedy of it, wants, not only to "reform" the criminal, but to treat crime as a disease; that sees poverty, and feeling (to its credit) sick at heart, loses its head and propounds "remedies" that will only make, more fearful the "poverty problem" of our grandchildren; that sees people struggling with the troubles of orthography, and (lies to schemes of "fonetik spcllin" that will ruin literature by making English a dead language. As the Post says, the problem that really confronts the age is one of "over-developed broad-mindedness." This is no new subject with us; it is no now subject anyway. It is a self-conscious age, a feverish age, exciting itself over trifles, engaging symptoms and leaving the causes untouched. Nothing that happens is left unsorutinised by our anxious reformers. As the Post says in its ironical way:

Vfe like to fancy that this is a groat day for thinking things through, that nothing can pass unchallenged, that for a moment at least it must enter tho spotlight of an insisted democracy and stand i"jvcaletl. "What purpose does it serve?" has boen asked sgain and again, not only of public policies, but of nearly every innocent whim as well. . . . llsrrly has so much of life been turned orer in a single decado as in the ono just past. Tho teaching of Greek is attacked on tho ground that it does no one any r.r.Ai. good. You can't fool the layman nowadays. If ho doesn't know whet you are about, ho asks vou point blank and expects no hemming'and hawing. Trust him to bo intelligent enough to understand you! Little wonder that such broad-mindedness should show impatience in tho presence of tho freakish spelling which English flaunts, or should eel condescension towards the sticklers lor such petty details. This is the broad-mindedness of the politicians who think higher education a 'contemptible triviality" because they see about them poor men who have votes; the broad-minded-ness oi those who deride the law of supply and demand because it is as awkward and irresistible as the tides; who deplore tho punishment ol criminals because it conflicts with uhsir conception of what the world ought to be; all those, in short, who think to slip round all the rock facts of ne on tnis planet by echoing the arch-quack Sganarelle with his "wo have changed all that." Our reformers, our haters of tradition, our brave "rebels," proud of their rebellion, have not learned that "thinking things through" is one thing and thinking them half through is another. There are evils to be remedied in the world, enough and to spare; but in any age those who can think things right through will always leave almost untouched many, perhaps most, of the institutions that the people who only halfthink would throw into the meltingpot. The New York paper's comment is here very shrewd. It is speaking of the meddlers: — Their text would be, the old order jhangeth, the present age is like no age that has preceded it, and with a whoop tho work of total Tcform would begin. I'ho mild remonstrance that perhaps no 'ingle ago is wise enough to criticise all past ages, and to pTopare for all ages of tho future, would probably provoke tho reply: "Let the dead bury their dead ind the future take care of itself." This is tho stago which inevitably arrives ,vhen an entire people such a.s ours underlakr.s to iiave opinions on all subjects; a rreat deal of cerebration goes on, and j :he level of intelligence about the more ibvioiis things of lifo grows to lie very ' ligh; meantime it goes hard with any ' practice which has come into being by ' sinuous paths. Such as spelling, and marriage, and 11 ;ho right of a man to his own. ' i Words, the reformers say, arc arbi- . irary symbols, and, bless our lives, < ainnofc we, in this twentieth century i -aeroplanes, Imperial Councils, ; ] w evangels, a great age!—cannot i ivc burst tho fetters of symbols J But <

tism, and a hundred other things that even the febrile "reformers"— of spelling and of all other old things—hold dear. Perhaps, after all, these restless men who mistake the froth and spindrift of the day for the heart of the ocean of human life have their uses; but it will be a bad day for the race of man when they seek to supersede with their innovations the slow processes of Time, "the true innovator." We cannot expect them to remember, but mankind in the mass may lie trusted to remember, tho truth so eloquently expressed by the Right Hox. James Bkyce, in an article wc quoted over four years ago: The bark that carries man and his fortunes traverses an ocean where the winds are variable and the currents unknown. He can do little to direct its course, and the mists that shroud the horizon haiifr. as thick and low as they did when the voyage began.