The Prime Minister. himself master of that curt and simple style wich Oliver Cromwell so strongly used in his dispatches from the field of war and council-room of State, asked us some time ago to be as thrifty ofp syllables as of food and funds. Have we hearkened? 1 fancy not. We may plead that this kind of saving is by no means as easy ay it sounds. For speech has its habits and formulae, and even the most watchful writer "escapes his Own notice." as the Greeks would have said, in using the stereotyped phrase, which is the exact meaning of cliché—that is a thing clicked out by machinery.
Brave efforts have been made to defend the cliche: if I remember rightly, Mr. Robert Lynd has been one of its more brilliant champions. But the argument is confused by the number and variety of cliches. Many. for example, are simply phrases which have stamped themselves on the public mind because of their power, rhythm. or picturesqueness. Shakespeare's texts are, thus regarded, veritable fountains of cliche, and you may protest that, if a phrase is brilliant when forged, it is true metal for all time. But that is surely false. The phrase has ceased to do its work when the vividness or audacity of the metaphor is no longer noticed by the users. It has as little edge on it as a hard-used razor-blade.
Thus. if you sit back and view. as though you had never seen them before, the familiar cliches taken from the Bible or the poets you will be astonished at their beauty or subtlety or gaunt, overwhelming power. It is the curse of the cliche that it has blinded the public to these qualities. So simple an image as "Beggard all description" was remarkable when Shakespeare applied it to the dazzling appearance of Deo petra in her barge, but now it has been turned into a faded metaphor.
hour vividness or value. So also the honorary sponsor, but the London staff have remained anonymous. Even the American Embassy were unable to give me the address of their headquarters.
I found them tucked away in the precinets of Dean's-yard, Westminster. The offices are in a pleasant, two-storey house with a yellow brick front and a bright green door.
The house has been lent by Mrs.
Beatrice Rathbone, widow of Flying-officer John Rathbone, who succeeded her husband as MP. for Bodmin.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.