434 



The Review of Reviews. 



November 1. 1906. 



admire the amazing staunchness of the soldiers and 

 police, who are the targets for the bullets of every 

 desperate assassin, but who, nevertheless, remain 

 true to their bread and salt, despite the most fran- 

 tic appeals of the revolutionaries to desert their 

 colours. The real abiding danger-point is the land 

 question. The revolutionary agitators are busy in- 

 citing the peasants to acts of violence, and now that 

 the harvest is over jacquerie may become general 

 instead of, as hitherto, being sporadic and intermit- 

 tent. It is very difficult to say what can be done, 

 but so far as outsiders can see, the best thing to do 

 would be to hurry on the elections for the Duma ; 

 and if the new elections should result, as Ministers 

 expect, in the return of a more moderate majority, 

 the sooner the onerous responsibility of evolving 

 order from chaos is shifted on to the shoulders of 

 that majority the better. The Tsar's saying about 

 the Duma, " They think I am conferring a privi- 

 lege; I am really asking them to share a burden," 

 should not be forgotten. His troubles just now are 

 largely due to the fact that he is trying to carry 

 that burden alone. [Cables announce that a new 

 Duma will be summoned in February. — Ed. " Aus. 

 R. of R.'] 



The Sultan of Turkev has been 



Par*liimentarv '''='' '^"'^ "' '^''"S'"'' of" death, and 

 Oovernment, the Shah of Persia, at his wits' end 

 how to cope with the discontent 

 of his people, has now decided to summon a Na- 

 tional Council at Teheran, composed of represen- 

 tatives of the princes, clergy, royalties, nobles, mer- 

 chants and tradesmen. Peasants are apparently not 

 to be represented. " The National Council shall 

 deliberate on all important affairs of State, and 

 shall have the power and right to express its views 

 with freedom and full confidence with regard to all 

 reforms which may be necessary to the welfare of 

 the country." The unrest in Egypt does not seem 

 to be abating. Pan-Islamic intrigue, excited through 

 the native press, and subsidised, it is alleged, by 

 the Sultan, still disturbs the rest of Lord Cromer, 

 who might do well to consider whether the Khedive 

 should not follow the example of the Shah. Even 

 the Dowager Empress of China is said to have de- 

 cided upon introducing some kind of representative 

 svstem into China in accordance with the recom- 

 mendations of the Commission which recently made 

 a flying reconnaissance of the Western World. If 

 Persia and China set up parliaments, how much 

 longer will India have to wait? 



We all hate and abhor any variation 

 in the familiar spelling of the Eng- 

 Spelliog Reform, jj^j^ language. What Mark Twain 

 calls "variegated spelling " irritates 

 us as we are irritated bv seeing a child with a dirty 

 nose, or to sit at table with a man who puts his 

 knife into his mouth. Hence Tohn Bull will be slow 



to follow President Roosevelt in his bold adventure 

 in favour of spelling reform. Henceforth all the 

 President's " eds ' 'are to be "ts." and the official 

 language of the American Republic is to be spelled 

 in accordance w^ith the recommendations of the 

 Simplified Spelling Board. These recommendations 

 mav be abbreviated as follows : — 



(1) Choose one form of spelling and stick to it. 



(2) Substitute t for ed and drop the doubled consonant 

 in words like dipped*. 



(3) Eliminate the diphthong. 



(4) Drop the e in words like judgement, the final te in 

 words like etiquette, the final ugh in words like though, 

 the final 1, me and ue in words like distill, programme and 

 demagogue. 



(5) Use s for c in words like defence, and z for s in 

 words like criticise. 



(6) Substitute f for ph in words like sulphur. 



(7) Drop the n in words like honour and labour, and 

 the c in words like scythe. 



(8) Spe'U words like theatre theater. 



This is a first instalment. There is more to follow 

 hereafter. 



English 



or 



American? 



People, especially the New York 

 editors, ridicule President Roose- 

 velt, and in this country there is 

 a comfortable con^■iction that we 

 need not worrv ourselves about his radical innova- 

 tions. But those who concern themselves with the 

 realities of things recognise in the President's action 

 the most significant blow which American ambition 

 has dealt to the supremacy of the Mother Country. 

 The building of a dozen .\merican " Dreadnoughts ' ' 

 would not more plainly challenge British supremacy 

 in a domain in which she has hitherto reigned 

 supreme. The adoption of the recommendations of 

 the simplified spelling recommendation is a new 

 Declaration of Independence, a subtler and more 

 deadly revolt than that which broke up the Empire 

 in the eighteenth century. For if it succeeds — and 

 it will succeed unless we forestall siich a catastrophe 

 bv ourselves taking steps to share in its success — 

 the one great tie which unites the English-speaking 

 world will disappear. Americans will no longer 

 speak the English language. They will write and 

 speak American. And from the day in which tiiey 

 adopt a phonetic system of spelling English, it is 

 American, and not English, that will become the 

 lingua franca of the world. Even now English, 

 despite our habit of writing a word " chair ' ' and 

 pronouncing it "table," which compels every 

 foreigner to learn it twice over, once by the ear and 

 once by the eye, has such signal merits that it is 

 distancing all competitors. But if to those natural 

 advantages there be added a simple system of 

 rational spelling, in a hundred years all the world 

 would be speaking English. If we do not reform 

 our spelling, all the world will speak American, and 

 English as she is spelled in English will be as unin- 

 telligible to the rest of mankind as Anglo-Saxon. 

 We mav hate President Roosevelt's innovation as 



