hinking in French after they were supposed to be speaking
and writing in English. Of equal historical significance are the two
series of words which English acquired from the military vocabulary
of the French,--the first containing _company, regiment, battalion,
brigade, division_, and _army_; and the second consisting of _marshal,
general, colonel, major, captain, lieutenant, sergeant_, and _corporal_.

(Here I claim the privilege of a parenthesis to remark that in Great
Britain _lieutenant_ is generally pronounced _leftenant_, than which no
anglicization could be more complete, whereas in the United States this
officer is called the _lootenant_, which the privates of the American
Expeditionary Force in France habitually shortened to '_loot_'--except,
of course, when they were actually addressing this superior. It may be
useful to note, moreover, that while 'colonel' has chosen the spelling
of one French form, it has acquired the pronunciation of another.)

Dr. Henry Bradley in the _Making of English_ provides further evidence
of the aforetime primacy of the French in the military art. '_War_
itself is a Norman-French word, and among the other French words
belonging to the same department which became English before the end of
the thirteenth century' are _armour, assault, banner, battle, fortress,
lance, siege, standard_, and _tower_--all of them made citizens of our
vocabulary, after having renounced their allegiance to their native
land. 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