in England (April 1926), of 'a real old-fashioned red-hot Holy-Ghost revival.'

The language of the American comic stage and of the cinema, unintelligible at first, is rapidly adopted into colloquial English. The Times Literary Supplement' remarked lately that 'London to-day takes its musical comedies and films ready made to the last stitch of slang from America.' The novel heroine now allows her face to 'register' her emotions, and Miss Murphy's 'Cabinet of Characters, from Theophrastus to Galsworthy,' was recently described by a serious critic as 'a series of close-ups.'

American slang, like that of other countries, is in a perpetual state of flux. It is doubtful whether Josh Billings would be altogether intelligible to a modern New York audience. One leading characteristic is, of course, substitution. I do not remember coming across the word dollar in the conversation of Mr Sinclair Lewis's characters. When Mr Babbitt secured a bottle of gin for cocktail purposes, he was told by the bar-keep that the price was twelve bucks. Prof. Macknight tells us that:

'In the vocabulary of modern youth, chivalry is dead. The maiden is no longer placed on a pedestal or throne. She is no longer worshipped as a divinity. A girl is a jane, a dame, a moll, a flapper, a worm, a skirt, a smelt, a squab, a chicken, a doll, a sardine, a flirt, a damsel, a frail, a hairpin, a piece of calico, a petting skirt. If she is popular she is a darb, a peach; a bird, a belle, a live one, a baby vamp, a whizz, a pippin, a star, a sweet patootie, a baby, a choice bit of calico, a sweetums, a snappy piece of work, a pretty Geneviève, a thrill, a flesh-and-blood angel. If she is unpopular, she is a pill, a pickle, a lemon, a dead one, a priss, a tomato, a chunk of lead, a drag, a gloom, a rag, an oil-can, a crumb, a nutcracker face, a flat-tire, a mess.'

As this dates from 1923 the list should probably now be modified and augmented.

Meiosis and hyperbole seem to be equally useful to the American slang-coiner. The first is exemplified by sitting up and taking nourishment,' as a description of vigorous health, or the already ancient to make oneself scarce,' the second by such figures as 'greased lightning' or 'till hell freezes.' But brevity is perhaps the chief

feature. This is attained either by apocope, as in vamp for vampire, mutt for muttonhead, fan for fanatic (apparently), etc., or by the substitution of an expressive monosyllable or compound of monosyllables for a longer word or description. It is here that American slang has made a real and useful contribution to colloquial English. There is about these American tabloids a terseness and a finality which leave nothing more to be said. When we have defined the Communist as either a crank or a crook, the subject is really exhausted. It is difficult now to imagine how we got on so long without the word stunt, how we expressed the characteristics so conveniently summed up in dope-fiend or high-browo, or any other possible way of describing that mixture of the cheap pathetic and the ludicrous which is now universally labelled sob-stuff. The amount of expression that American can give to the inexpressive particle is truly marvellous. This fact had been quickly noted by our own speakers and writees An English preacher of distinction has lately decla from the pulpit that 'The Church is up against the indifference of the masses, and it is up to the Church to transform that indifference into eager enthusiasm.' I have recently read in a university examination paper that 'Molière was out to reform society by the medium of laughter.' In American the man who is for it' is a man who is 'going to get his,' or, more fully, who is 'going to get what's coming to him.'

At the present time great efforts are being made in the United States to teach correct English to the children of the foreign-born. It is possible that these efforts, combined with recent measures against multitudinous immigration, may have as a result the creation of a fairly homogeneous colloquial speech not too remote from educated English. If, as seems more likely, the American temperament, despite its general docility to standardisation, persists in its present attitude towards a standardised language, spoken American must eventually become as distinct from English as Yiddish is from classical Hebrew.

ERNEST WEEKLEY.

Art. 10.-ASIA AND THE BOLSHEVISTS.

To our forefathers the conservatism of the East passed into a proverb. They looked upon it as unchanging; not absolutely so, since no nation with any pretensions to civilisation can remain stationary, but relatively, by comparison with the more rapidly moving West. The West has always moved faster than the East, at any rate since the great era of maritime discovery, but the pace was accelerated and the difference therefore became more marked in the 19th century, when the discovery of the properties of steam and electricity revolutionised not only industry but the whole scheme of international relations. Europe penetrated into Asia, carrying with her the results of Western activity; and although Asia has not been without her effect upon Europe, Western influence upon the East has been far more marked. In the realm of political ideas the conceptions of freedom

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democracy were introduced, and caught the imaginaof the Eastern peoples. In the realm of material progress railways, factories, telegraphs and telephonesin fact all the paraphernalia of the great Western discoveries-changed the face of the unchanging East. The East began to remodel her armies and navies upon the Western model and even to dress her troops in the - Western fashion. She dethroned her kings and began to set up representative assemblies; she turned to unaccustomed systems and unaccustomed trade, until public opinion in the West discarded the old label and began to talk of the rapidly changing East. The "unchanging East," says a recent writer, 'has now lost such meaning as it ever had,' and the phrase reflects accurately the opinion of the average man of to-day.

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Strangely enough-and yet, when one remembers the speculative tendencies of the East, not so strangely-the East has moved more obviously in the sphere of ideas than of action. For the proof of this, India offers the most convenient illustration; not only because from her intimate connection with the West she has been more closely studied, but because she has given to the East two great religions and has kept alight the fires of two minor ones. The early Aryans came upon a people who were themselves civilised to some extent and who dwelt

among savage races. They brought with them the great Vedic gods, but there is little doubt that their religious ideas became modified by contact with those whom they had dispossessed, as the religion of the latter had been affected by the aboriginal customs and beliefs. This Vedic religion gave way to abstruse speculation, and for a time the religion became purely metaphysical until the Vedic gods almost entirely disappeared. Some, however, remained and were exalted from the position of minor deities with limited attributes into the personification of great principles, and the persistence of these gods opened up a way for the satisfaction of man's craving for a personal god. The Way of Knowledge was superseded by the Way of Devotion; the idea of incarnation facilitated the worship of superhuman persons who represented to the lesser intelligence those abstract ideas which they were unable to grasp. And thus by the survival of a residue, first of the Vedic gods, then of the philosophic conceptions, and lastly of the personal God, the whole being profoundly modified by primeval superstitions, we have arrived at that curious compound, Hinduism, which it has puzzled many writers to define.

At one stage of the evolution of Hinduism a reformer appeared who preached against idolatry and priestcraft, and based his system entirely upon philosophy and ethics. He had a pronounced success in his own country where kings and princes adopted the new cult and the greatest of them all was a convert. The Brahmans, however, were too strong, and the new religion died in the home of its birth, though not till after its seeds had been planted in distant lands where they took root and flourished, Buddhism eventually becoming established in the place of, or side by side with, the ancient cults. Buddhism went to Ceylon, to Burma, to China, whence it was transplanted to Japan. But the form has changed. The usual desire for a personal god-for a God of some sort-prevailed, and Buddha became deified with numerous satellites to bear him company.

These things happened long ago. The point to notice is that there has been little or no change since those faroff days. No one in India has ever thought of disputing the authority of the Vedas; no one in Burma or Ceylon has questioned the Pitakas; no one in China criticises

the Confucian text. It goes without saying that the precepts of the Koran are the guiding star of Islam, although learned Imams have put various interpretations upon obscure passages. On the other hand, Christianity, at any rate where it has not been kept as it were under lock and key by an authority claiming to be infallible, has undergone considerable modification. Science and criticism have made fierce onslaughts upon the Scriptures, and the views of their exponents have so far prevailed that certain episodes, once regarded as genuinely historical, have been acknowledged to be legends; the authenticity of certain books has been called in question, and learned divines are now at pains to argue on logical lines matters that within human memory were accepted with unquestioning faith. Nor is this true only of the various revelations. Religious persecution is now unknown in Western Europe and has given way to a religious toleration which sometimes threatens to become religious indifference; in Russia, on the other hand, where once the Jews were persecuted, though only indirectly for their faith, indifference has been translated into active hatred, and men are persecuted not for refusing to conform to a creed but for daring to have any creed at all.

Religious persecution is by no means dead in the East. Islam is dominant in Asia Minor, in Irak, in Persia, in Afghanistan, while in India its followers number about a quarter of the population and contain some of the most virile units. Wherever it has come into collision with other creeds it has shown no change since the days when the Zoroastrians were driven from Persia and their gallant remnant found a home in Western India. There is no need to labour the point; every one recalls the extermination of the Armenians, the harrowing of the Assyrians and the Moplah massacres of Hindus. Neither Hinduism nor Buddhism has been a persecuting religion for many centuries; but the spirit which animates persecution is still to be foundin India, where, since the patchwork alliance of Gandhi and the Ali brothers broke down, religious tension has become more strained than ever; and in China, where from time to time religious passion flares out against foreigners and especially against Christian missionaries. Vol. 247.-No. 489.

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