VERBAL INFLATION

The "world-wide campaign for retrenchment has invaded the field of speech," according to the New York Times. The suggestion for curtailing superlatives starts in France where a member of the Institute deplores this "age of hyperbole." The Frenchman's criticism might well be taken to heart here in America, where several factors have conspired against a decent moderation in speech.

First, there is the survival of the pioneer spirit, which favors bluff and hearty comment and finds a well-considered choosing of words too precious for its taste. Then there in this much-deplored age of sensation, which gives to the gentler diction of Charles Lamb's day something of the flatness of circus lemonade. There are also the over-fecund keys of typewriter and linotype, where flying fingers run riot in a manner unknown to the plodding scribe and compositor of an earlier day. Finally, there are the advertisers, who distill the strongest potations from Mr. Roget's Thesaurus to set off the merits of each new whisk-broom.

It devolves upon the college men, who really should know better, to be less prodigal with their superlatives and more precise in their epithet. It behooves them, unless their exuberant natures rebel, to cultivate the love of understatement which characterizes the Latin "grand style." These measures may save the verbal coinage of America from becoming hopelessly debased.