THE SPEECHES 01' GERMANY.
[To THE EDITOR or THE " Specmm.1 Sia,—Some of your readers may not have come across an amusing and, from the linguistic and political point of view, significant anecdote cited by M. A. Meillet in his delightful and instructive little book, Les Lanynes duns /'Europe notirelle. The anecdote is translated from the Frankfurter Zeitung of August 8th, 1917 (morning edition), and, coaling from a German solute, may be accepted as being free from anti-German bias. It is this :— "Two German soldiers, one from the North, the other a Bavarian, were working together in the occupied part of France. The Northerner asked the Bavarian to lend him his axe. But the speech of the two men differed so widely that they could not undersbind one another. However, the Bavarian explained: by signs that he could nut spare his tool. The Northern German then said, 'Tenteswile revert ' using the language which the German troops employ in occupied parts of France. The Bavarian replied, Wei, +eel, kompri.'"
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