What Mr. Bernard Shaw says needs no support from me.
But with his condemnation of slovenly English every right- thinking man (as a former editor of this paper loved to put it) must most heartily concur. Mr. Shaw meant spoken English. A good deal could be said on the same lines about written English, but that is less important. .People who are inaudible, or audible with difficulty, on the wireless, in a chancel or a pulpit, on a platform or in private conversation, are public nuisances. Some of the clergy, I think, are the worst offenders, and I suppose that on a general average the best enunciation is heard, as it should be, on the stage. Yet is there any reason, after all, why the enunciation of the stage should be better than the enunciation of the Church.? Clear speech may be considered intrinsically more important in the latter case than the former. But first and last clarity of utter- ance in ordinary conversation matters in the aggregate most of all. The amount of irritation and strain slovenly speakers create in these islands in any twenty-four hours is beyond computation. (I am sometimes accused of lack of clarity myself; that only means that the other person is deaf.) * * * *
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