Another quotation from Dr. Bradley imposes itself.  He tells us that the English writers of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries felt themselves at liberty to introduce a French word whenever they pleased.  ’The innumerable words brought into the language in this way are naturally of the most varied character with regard to meaning.  Many of them, which supplied no permanent need of the language, have long been obsolete.’

This second sentence may well give us heart of hope considering the horde of French terms which invaded our tongue in the long years of the Great War.  If camion and avion, vrille and escadrille supply no permanent need of the language they may soon become obsolete, just as mitrailleuse and franc-tireur slipped out of sight soon after the end of the Franco-Prussian war of fifty years ago.  A French modification of the American ‘gatling’ was by them called a mitrailleuse; and nowadays we have settled down to the use of machine-gun.  A franc-tireur was an irregular volunteer often incompletely uniformed; and when he was captured the Prussians shot him as a guerrilla.  It will be a welcome relief if camouflage, as popular five years ago as fin-de-siecle twenty-five years ago, shall follow that now unfashionable vocable into what an American president once described as ‘innocuous desuetude’.  Perhaps we may liken mitrailleuse and franc-tireur, vrille and escadrille, brisance and rafale, to the foreign labourers who cross the frontier to aid in the harvest and who return to their own country when the demand for their service is over.

III

The principle which ought to govern can be stated simply.  English should be at liberty to help itself freely to every foreign word which seems to fill a want in our own language.  It ought to take these words on probation, so to speak, keeping those which prove themselves useful, and casting out those which are idle or rebellious.  And then those which are retained ought to become completely English, in pronunciation, in accent, in spelling, and in the formation of their plurals.  No doubt this is to-day a counsel of perfection; but it indicates the goal which should be strived for.  It is what English was capable of accomplishing prior to the middle of the seventeenth century.  It is what English may be able to accomplish in the middle of the twentieth century, if we once awaken to the danger of contaminating our speech with unassimilated words, and to the disgrace, which our stupidity or laziness must bring upon us, of addressing the world in a pudding-stone and piebald language.  Dr. Bradley has warned us that ’the pedantry that would bid us reject the word fittest for our purpose because it is not of native origin ought to be strenuously resisted’; and I am sure that he would advocate an equally strenuous resistance to the pedantry which would impose upon us words of alien tongue still clad in foreign uniform.