THE S.P.C.E.
SIR,—How glad I am that " Janus " has invented the S.P.C.E.! For now we have a court to which we can bring atrocities with the comforting knowledge that they will at any rate be recognised as barbaric, even if there is no redress. He cites the misquotation of the Archbishop of Canterbury, " I must make way for he who . ." That is on all fours with " between you and I," which seems to have become part of the language ; and I could quote a dozen other examples, used even by public speakers, of the nominative after a preposition.. Where is that grammar-drill which, by his own declara- tion, Mr. Churchill values above every other part of his education? • Will " Janus " gibbet another perpetual outrage? Phonologists call it the " intrusive r "; it has recently become an incorrigible gate-crasher. Everywhere you may hear it—in the pulpit, on the stage, and even in the news on the wireless, except from the Scot Joseph Macleod: " The Indiar Office ; the idear of invasion ; Chinar and Japan ; Australiar and New Zealand ; the Rajahr of Rawalpindi ; Southern Rhodesiar alone ; the arear of Nicaraguar ;s small . . ." (Conversely, few people without Scottish blood in them can say " your ear." They all say " yaw yer.") Will no one rid us of this, servile consonant? Or has it come to stay, like the " t " in the French
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