To the Editor of the "Norta-Cuisa Day News."
Sin,—"T's" letter appearing in the "N.-C. Herald" of March 20 is held by you in "Notes and Com ments" (incorrectly, as 1—shall show) to imply that a Britisher is one who Britishes, even as a publisher is one who publishes, and you object to the word Britisher because Britishing is an unknown art and no one who has Britished has yet been discovered.
Does this, even if it be admitted, destroy the credit of the word? By no means: It only drives it back on another line of defence. Is not British an adjective? And are not adjectives' susceptible of inflections indicating degrees of comparison? Manifestly Britisher is the comparative of British, If it is objected that adjectives denoting nationality are not compared, because 2 person either is or is not of a given nationality. I confute the objection in two ways; first, by a demonstration that it is possible for one person to be Britisher than another, and, secondly, by an appeal to analogy 1. Let A, B and C be three persons born in British territory, A of alien parents, B of parents of whom one was British and one alien, and © of British parents. All three are British but who will dispute that B is Britisher than A, or that C is the Britishest of the three?
Passing over the obvious analogy of Welsher (only to spare some small minded carper the shame of advancing the petty cavil that welsh is used as a verb), 1 adduce that of Lett. Will anyone have the hardihood to affirm that Letter and Lettest are not impeccable English! I hesitate to in stance China as a comparative form, partly because of its accepted (though perhaps erroneous) spelling, partly because the positive and superlative forms are wanting; but there is a wide-spread though unacknowledged conviction that it is in fact a comparatiy as is proved by the frequency wit which you may hear it pronounced Chiner when a vowel follows, e.g. Chiner eggs.
I have not left myself space to justify at length "T's" analogy with publisher, but ish' is notoriously Apart from the insanity of opposing the Versailles Treaty, particularly in the light of the result an adjectival termination.
Tick-! of the plebiscite, those who wished lish derives from tickle, publis!|to uphold the attitude of the (by an obvious analogy) frow|dismissed government apparently pubble, frequentative verb) also hold that, under the circum-derived from pub, as gable from! gab or dribble from drip. Publish! therefore means '"'addicted to fre-! quanting pubs," and publisher! "more addicted," ete It is a lamentable proof of the backwardness of English lexicography that this sense of publish is given in no dictionary to which I have access, nor is the word pubble given at all. stances, the King has no constitu-\tional right to dismiss the government. Possibly the majority of Danes are republicans, but it would Nindeed be strange if none other than they would attempt to resist what can only ko a chauvinistic faction. Kings in other countries have had to go for far less.
I am, etc., Shanghai, April 8.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.