Brevity cannot be achieved, you may so; while we toil with such inevitable words a "Government," Agreed, Then why not accept certain rules of curtailment? Why not a War Print Pact by which initials serve for certain words in frequent use? If "P.M," is good enough for the Prime Minister in conrsation why not also in print? Why not for the Government, "C," for the Cabi~ net, "M," for "Ministry," for "Nazi," and "S." for "Scandinavia"? An agreed scheme of abbreviations might afflict readers of fixed habits for a while, but the suffering would pass, After all, everybody now accepts the letters "R.A.F," in a leading article. Why boggle at "P/M. will now state G.'s plan for pressing S, war"? It is not pretty, let, us admit, It is quite possible that Speling Reform might be accepted just as tranquilly as a form of economy Our various usages of "ough" are not. only a sin again sense, they are a waste of paper. I am myself a sentimentalist with regard to language and am pained by the sight of "thru," but it is really a pain without reason and 'a pain which would soon vanish, We could save much space for ourselves as well as remove much affliction for foreign speaker and reader of English if we tidied up our spelling now. Suppose that all the suggested forms of saving were in use at once, we should be able to turn such a sentence as Although the Government, through its dilatory Ministry of Agriculture, has dissipated enough ploughing time, it should still be possible to rough out propositions for a speed-up of agricultural labour into The G., thru its slow Min. of Ag. has wasted enuf plowing time, it cond rut out plans for speeding of farm labour That may not be right by the rules of Nu Speling (and it certainly looks barbarous to sentimentalists like myself), but it serves to show the saving of print and paper which a form of Nu Speling might bring us. If I were one of the crusaders in this cause I should now bombard the Government with plans for print saving, which, in effect, means saving of ship space and of money,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.