ne_, September 26, 1920.

'THE CAMPAIGN FOR PURE ENGLISH

'Among those who joined it (the S.P.E.) immediately were
Arthur J. Balfour, A.C. Bradley, Austin Dobson, Thomas Hardy,
J.W. Mackail, Gilbert Murray, Mrs. Humphry Ward, and Mrs.
Wharton.... The rallying of these men and women of letters
was not more significant than the prompt adhesion of the
Professors of English in the various British Universities:
W.M. Dixon, Oliver Elton, E.S. Gordon, C.H. Herford, W.P.
Ker, G.C. Moore-Smith, F.W. Moorman, A. Quiller-Couch, George
Saintsbury, and H.C.K. Wyld....

'There is a peril to the proper development of the language in
offensive affectations, in persistent pedantry, and in other
results of that comprehensive ignorance of the history of
English, which we find plentifully revealed in many of our
grammars. It is high time that men who love the language, who
can use it deftly and forcibly, and who are acquainted with
the principles and the processes of its growth, should raise
the standard of independence....

'It is encouraging to realize that the atrophy of the
word-making habit is less obvious in the United States than
it is in Great Britain.... We cannot but regret that it is
not now possible to credit to their several inventors American
compounds of a delightful expressiveness--_windjammer,
loan-shark, scare-head_, and that more delectable
_pussy-footed_--all of them verbal creations with an
imaginative quality almost Elizabethan in its felicity, and
all of them examples of the purest English.... We Americans
made the compound _farm-hand_, and employ it in preference to
the British [English?] _agricultural labourer_.

'_The attention of the officers of the society may be called
to the late Professor Lounsbury's lively and enlightening_
History of the English Language, _and to Professor George
Philip Krapp's illuminating study of_ Modern English.

BRANDER MATTHEWS.'

* * * * *

REPORT

Of the proceedings of the Society for the first year ending Xmas,
1920.

The Society still remains governed by the small committee of its
original founders: the support of the public and the press has been
altogether satisfactory: the suggestions and programme which the
committee originally put forward have met with nothing but favourable
criticism; no opposition