"The words of Lloyd George, badly understood and
badly transmitted," said M. Briand to the Chamber of Deputies,
[Footnote: Special Cable to _The New York Times,_ May 25, 1921,
by Edwin L, James. ] "seemed to give the Pan-Germanists the idea that
the time had come to start something." A British Prime Minister,
speaking in English to the whole attentive world, speaks his own
meaning in his own words to all kinds of people who will see their
meaning in those words. No matter how rich or subtle--or rather the
more rich and the more subtle that which he has to say, the more his
meaning will suffer as it is sluiced into standard speech and then
distributed again among alien minds. [Footnote: In May of 1921,
relations between England and France were strained by the insurrection
of M. Korfanty in Upper Silesia. The London Correspondence of the
_Manchester Guardian_ (May 20, 1921), contained the following
item:
"The Franco-English Exchange in Words.
"In quarters well acquainted with French ways and character I find a
tendency to think that undue sensibility has been shown by our press
and public opinion in the lively and at times intemperate language of
the French press through the present crisis. The point was put to me
by a well-informed neutral observer in the following manner.
"Words, like money, are tokens of value. They represent meaning,
therefore, and just as money, their representative value goes up and
down.
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