Daring the wrath of the pedagogic gods who beam over Oxford, the great mainspring of culture, it might be said, and has been proved, that its products are not very good at spelling. Although the Oxford University Press produces that monumental work "A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles" and the hallowed walls have produced an accent which is making the British Broadcasting Corporations an-nouricers something strange in the world of vocal sounds, Harvard University has beaten Oxford at its own game. A recent "spelling bee" arranged by the B.B.C. gave Harvard a four point win over Oxford, and the suggestions that the masculine side of Oxford is sinking into comparative decadence gains strength from the fact that the women did better than the men. Comfort as far as the Harvard situation is concerned emanates from the fact that the feminine superiority in both teams was general, Arranged as a Trans-Atlantic broadcast the competition proved interesting and Oxford is declared to have been saved by Miss Penelope Knox and Miss Miranda Tallents, the latter being daughter of Sir Stephen Tallents, the BB. Controller of Public Relations. Prince Obolensky, the rugger player, was to have led the Oxford team "but was prevented from attending by a football injury. Oxford's first failure was "haemorrhage" but the score was equalled by Harvard dropping the "e" out of "loneliness" There were other dreadful mistakes—and it is hoped that the compositors and proofreaders do their best with these efforts—"daguerreotype" was an equalizing word. "Sesquipedalian" was a distinct British victory for a female member of the British team, but other words which disturbed Anglo-American spelling relations were: embarrassment, truncheon, gamboge and isosceles,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.