1933-11-10 — Page 7

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 1933.

LITERARY NOTES

THE CHINA MAIL.

SLANG DOWN Hitler On The Hitler JEFFERCAIRNOL Galsworthy's Best Seller NOVEL OF KENTISH

THE AGES

Language In The Making.

By SIR JOHN SQUIRE

Slang: To-day and Vesterday.

By Eric Partridge (Routledge, 211) Nearly 600 pages of close print; and all

words coined by about people mostly not of the reading kind. Mr. Partridge, with a tho- roughness commoner in Germany than in England, but a húmour commoner in England than in Ger-

Spirit

Fury Against Jews And Pacifist Fools

$6

NATURAL ENEMIES"

DENOUNCED

(By E. C. BENTLEY)

The Way Beyond

The Way Beyond. By Jeffery

Farnol (Sampson Low. 78. 6d;)'. "The Broad Highway" was ona of Mr. Jeffery Farnol's happiest and most popular efforts, and every reader who came under its spell will be interested to find Sir Peler

Publishers Rationing The Orders. LITERARY NEWS AND NOTES

-

COUNTRYSIDE

He made journeys to all Marl Bad Men And Lover borough's battlefields, both here In Exciting Book, and abroad, and obtained special permission from the King to

gro

through the Stuart manuscripts The Man at Lone Tree. By (By JAMES BARRIE),

at Windsor Castle.

Sullivan. (Hard Locks. Bị bắt London, Oct. 8.

He wrote mainly late John Galsworthy's last novel, evenings, part by hand and the in the Vibart, Charman, Black George, "Over the River," looks like selling other he dictated. and others making a welcome re-

Already this

of

The foundation upon which thi story restá in the Intrusion into th appearance in The Way Beyond." better than anything he has ever well into the second volume aleepy Kentish countryside of

written.

this big task.

strange little man from foreig! The first volume appeared ou parts with a sack of gold nuggets Every one seems to be asking October 6. Harrap's, the publish and a Great Dane with "malik for it, and the demand has be-fers, told me that the second im- rather blood-shot eyes,” and almost

incredible sagacity.

#

A country girl and her sweet,

on heart are gathered in to provide the

be

Here are the ingredients.

Sir Peter and Charmian are now in middle life, the forid parents of In 20-year-old son who has fallen in love with the daughter of Black many, has set himself to write the tunity of forming on

The public now have the oppor- been borne, with the utmost case. George. In Mr. Farnol's world the

come ad great that the publish. pression of it was exhausted before history of elang in England, with Herr Hitler's famous work, the first us;

opinion on It was not they which overthrew course of true love cannot be expect-

publication. subsections on American and Do-English translation of which

what overthrew US. wased to run smooth, and certainly,

ers are actually rationing the

Another Best Novel. minion slang, school slang, Uni-peared on October 13.

ap- the

force which prepared for Richard and Rosemary have to bat-

orders that keep pouring in! Mr. Gollancz is giving us those defeats by robbing the tle with enormous difficulties. This versity alang. Cockney slang and

The book was published on Octo- October 14 'what he claims to It is not to be judged merely as nation of all political and moral is a very pleasing elegant and man-ber 3 and by October 8 the first the best novel he has ever the slang of various professions.

love Interest, and a few "bad meny book. The Importance of it to instinct and strength by schemes nered story, bathed in the light

pub- The deßnition of slang is as dif- his innumerable readers is that it which had been under war

lished. I consider this fleult as the orgin of the word is the work of Hitler, written before many decades.

for that never was obsça or land-and edition of 50,000 copies was exstatement from

a bold follow to ginger up the action which publiher none the worse for that. For the hausted. As Mr. Chesterton said the days his party gained power. obscure.

of carries the reader on from one ex Gollancz's high reputation. of the elephant: It ta difficult to it is a formless mixture of autobio. Jewish. It is the principal conten-Mr. Farhol's admirers that he has The "schemes" in question were rest, it is sufficient to intimate to

The book is "Three. Citles," by the seas to those desolate

citing chapter to another, and 'aérosi Four years ago Lord Rosebery define it, but one knows one when graphy-which is by far the best tion of this strange book that the once more picked the lock of the persuaded Winston Churchill

Sholem Asch, and is an immense to one sees one. And if definition be part of it-crude political philoan-Jews have not merely been a fatal door leading to Romance. attempted.

trilogy telling of revolutionary where prospectors sometimes. write a life of the Duke of Marl-Russia in Fetersburg, Moscow and gold. no single description phising, and ferocious partisan rhe-element of corruption in the racial will suffice. For there is slang Lorir.

life of Germany, but that each in- German nobility prided itself on its

borough.

Waran. which in costers' alang. slang

Oriental scholars who do not dividual Jew has been a member anti-Semitism, and resented the

It took him the four years to do; The author was born in War pleasantly filling an empty hour, `or which is school slang, and slang happen to be Moslems describe the of a conscious and deliberate con Emperor's association with wealthy which is language in the making: Koran as a decidedly bad book. So aptracy against that life. It is the Jews. for every idiom, every metaphor, is "My Struggle"; but the followers "innate greedy brutality" of the begins as slang. Slang is experof the Prophet do not, by all

Herr Hitler, in fact, learnt his ac-Jew that urges him to the destruc- janti-Semitism from an earlier gen- mental language. Some of it sticka (which is slang) and some of than do the followers of Herr Hitler

counts, set more store by the oneftion of the Western World.

eration. He could not possibly It does not perish becomes incor- by the other.

Herr Hitler, of course, is a fanamake that prejudice more violent or tic. He claims to be a fanatic, and more unintelligent. porated in the language, and then

But it Was Mob Oratory.

insists repeatedly that any politi-reserved to him to make it they call it "Idiom."

In neither case are the faithfuljcal doctrine that is not held and effectively ferocious. seeking the gratification of a liter-taught fanatically, and with the The anti-Semitic fury of Herr rea-ary taste. The Nazi enthusiasts extreme of intolerance, is worth-Hitler's book is the outstanding Bon for the origins of slang. I want to have what Hitler stands Jess. More than once he illustrates thing about it. There is no uni- cannot catalogue the whole fifteen. for in Hitler's own words; and the this point by reference to the his-versally accepted explanation of "Sheer high spirits" is one. To wilder the words the truer they are tory of Christianity; as thus: the hold of Hitlerism upon Ger- be different" is another. "To be to the worshipped personality of The greatness of Christendom many: but unquestionably the pleturesque" is another. "To Ice-the Leader."

lay not in any attempts to recon-frantic demagogy of the attack on sen the sting of, or on the other Herr Hitler would not be flatter-elle itself with the philosophical the Jews is one of the few essen- hand to give additional point to, a jed by any pretence of admiration of opinions of the ancients, which tial elements. What one feels in refusal, a rejection, a recantation,” | his book п

an intellectual had some similarity with its own,freading "My Struggle" is that it is

Why Slang Exists.

Mr. Partridge gives fifteen

more

in another. "To show that one be triumph. He has the deepest con- but in unrelenting and fanaticala response to the demand for a longs to a certain school, trade or tempt and hatred for those who are proclamation and defence of its scapegoat for military defeat and profession. artistic or Intellectual "Muffed with knowledge and In-jown doctrines.

for the results of post-war political sets, or social clans" in brief, to be intellect."

The Chancellor, in fact, feels not ineptitude.

"In the swim" or to "establish con- He remarks in one place that if the least embarrassment in com- There are others to be hated, of tract" in another. I dare say that the Emperor's chief Minister in paring his political "movement" course. Among the natural enemies. had he thought longer he might 1914 had been a less highly educat-with a Church which bases itself of Germany are her own "pacifist have produced thirty reasons for ed man. "the German grenadier's upon a Divine revelation of spiri-foola" and believers In "the mad- slang instead of fifteen. The facts heroic blood would not have been tual truth. If the Church refuses ness of internationalism." But the remain that alang exists, and that shed in vain,” One recognises the to compromise, why should the Na-true sillian of the piece is the Jew, a great deal of acccepted English tone of that—a tone that rings tional Socialist German Workers' plotting the destruction of civilisa- was once slang.

through all these 280 pages. 71 is Party stoop to de so?

tion and the anthronment of There is almost `n hierarchy of the tone of the mob-orster.

Fanatics, admittedly. are prone Jewish malevolence on the ruins. alang, as Greenough and Killredge One can imagine it uttered with to delusions. Among Herr Hitler'a National Self-Idolatry implicatively show when they say that screaming vehemence and pas- delusions in connection with anti- Another delusion of which much that "to mortgage one's reputa- sionate beating of the breast which Semitism is the conviction that it is made in these pages fe the ea tion" in as essentially Gelang is described by those who have was he who opened German eyes to sential feebleness of pre-war Ger- phrase an "o be, knocked out" in heard Herr Hitler on the platform. the saving grace of that political many. It suffered from "universal an examination fexam?] but there But his thinking on the subject (ronception, Jewish influence was half-heartedness" and from "pusil is a considerable difference in the of the war, as on other subjects, is dominant, he suggest, because of lanimity": fts education did not vulgarity of the expressions. To not trammelled by consistency. If "the ignorance of the mass of the produce "practical ability," but come a cropper" may be "nid to in one place the German defeat is people as to the true nature of the plisbility" and "weakness of will. stand midway between the two. attributed to Inellectualism fn Jews, and the lack of instinctive power," which accounted for the "At fault" (from a dog that loses high places, In others the cause perception in our apper class" German being "little respected." the scent) is a dignified idiom. of it is declared to be "the Jewihh Yet those who knew pre-war It had not the Hitlerite spirit.

This lani example illustrates a menace;" and that, of course, is the Germany used to think of it as the very frequent and important char-point which Herr Hitler is most active centre of fanatical anti. this portrait of the Germany which acteristic of slang: the tendency concerned to drive home. Accord-Semitism in Western Europe.

of slang words to rise in the world ing to this view of the facts, the fennobling. it may be called), for German conduct of the war was a "At fault," has, within thirty years miracle of efficiency up to the very become standard English. This Inst. ascent is recognised by most writ- ers on English...... In Weekley's Etymological Dictionary, many

The world will fail to recognise

created in half, a century an Finding A Scapegoat

economic development without The Germonised Houston Cham-parallel, a great colonial empire berlain's huge and fantastic book, and a mighty navy. It'may rather The Foundations of the Nine-be said that the fatal weakness in teenth Centtury, which has all that towering achievement was been called the Bibe of anti-Semi-precisely that element of the The defeats on the field of bat-tism, was a best-seller in Germany Hitlerite spirit in it. slang words and phrases ignored tle of August, 1918, might have years before the war. The old Crazy national self-idolatry, be-

by previous lexicographers are his-

terically explained, for the excel- lent reason that "in the past the slang of one generation has often become the literary language of the next, and the manners with din tinguish contemporary life suggest that this will be still more fre- quently the case in the future,"

That is the truth: a hundred years hence the King's Speech at the opening of Parliament may contain such a phrase as "We are fed up with the state of the world." Mr. Wodehouse's Part......

I have read this enormous book through, astonished at the dead Elizabethan and Georgian vocabul- arien, astonished also at the num- bar of slang words that have per xisted through centuries, astonish- ed again by the size of the pro- fessional slang vocabularies. But what pleased me most of all was {} the pannage about Mr. P. G. Wode- house. The historians of contem porary literature Invariably over look him. They write about all sorts of eccentric posts and morbid novelists, but they take no notice of him because he is so popular- just as they Ignore that great short-story writer · Mr..,W. W. Jacobs. Here, in a learned, and al- moat pedantle, work about Blang, he comes into his own; apparently, throughout his career he has YO- corded current slang more faith-- fully than anybody, else, Littla did Mr. Wodehouse think when, he was chronicling the adventures of "Ukridge "and - "Wooster," "that ;; "he would be giving, the professori a text. But he was;'"-and;",

Chaus 'aund"years" "honse, learned doctors of Berlin will probably be quoting. him as an authority,

Semitic "Corruption." He writes:

CHANCETAOR

PREMIER

The thrés Dictators "who" AFS

CHANCELLOR HITTER

Europeus stage to-day. In a recent kännscitation'áttomat, Changzh

"Dr. Dallinas'in bla'war' arši

jef in ruthless brutality glorifica- tion of war-these things are preached in this book with a new extravagance of intensity. But [they were not unknown in Hohenzollern Germany; they were ita ruin. For Herr Hitler they are counsels of salvation. /

What du Herr Hitler and his "movement" required of the world? According to this book which Herr Hitler wishes all good Ger- mans to take as their guide the German nation must have "the ter- |ritory which “is due to it ong, this {earth.” It must aim at "the" {ning of fresh territory in Europa," not merely the frontiers of 1914, which "mean nothing in respect of Germany's future.”

And for this purpose Germany should seek the alliance of Great Britain and Italy! This agreeable programme hardly calls for Roy comment.

--" Learn to Stop Talking

In order to it itself for its |Hitlerlie destiny, the new Germany [must abandon the "senseless and dangerous aberration” of: Parlia- mentary democracy; acknowledge as sacred "the authority of the individual"—whomever" that may happen to mean; do" away with m free Prass--that “avil power in the {State}" reform a school curriculum "ninety per cent, of which it does not need be fully trained, to arms" and "earn to stop talking,'!*!: On the other hand, talking is all- Important. The growth of avery: great movement ; is dus, tos great, | speakers and not to great writhra."; } It should be inaid in conclusión": list this book is marked byỹ ap spi palling" sincerity. That is one of the most respectable."ons.

saw, but after the war

of!

Wed

it, and during that time he spared naturalised an American in New 50, and the author has exercised no pains to collect every bit material which was available.

York, where he wrote and had considerable vigour in his use of produced several plays.

thern.

GLOUCESTER BUILDING

The Management has pleasure in announcing the opening of the new

GLOUCESTER LOUNGE

on

ARMISTICE DAY

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 1933,

EXCELLENT! SPLENDID/

AN

COOLER SWEETER & BETTER.