MENCKEN HITS SLOPPY USE OF LANGUAGE IN U. S.

"I continue to believe that the study of Greek and Latin is largely a waste of time, at all events for the average student." H. L. Mencken, famous American writer and critic, told a CRIMSON reporter recently. Mencken, one of the greatest living authorities on the English language, has for many years pooh-poohed the importance of the classics as a background for the correct use of the English tongue.

"I am certainly in agreement with the belief that it is a valuable and decent thing to write English correctly, and with a proper regard for its extraordinary beauties," Mencken said. "If I were the editor of a daily newspaper I would certainly insist that even the sports pages be written for better than they are. I sometimes marvel that Americans are so insensitive to the gross abuse of their mother tongue. Certainly such a magazine as Time, if it were printed in England, would be denounced violently for its apparently deliberate degradation of the language."