The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-10-17
EUROPE WILL WANT NEW
 LANGUAGE AFTER THE WAR
By SAM T. EvERARD

Berne. October 5.-(special Correspond ce)-Europe wants new language. 'Langwidge" Supplying 1t will be the greatest reconstruction work to follow the war. Europe has no swear words or cuss words left. When peace comes, Eu- rope will need new guns. new shells, new forts, new houses new churches, new money, new tembers. America, having kept the peace, and not wasted any of these things, can supply them at highest prices. Ingenuity industry and push will make America the universal provider. But can America deliver new cuss words? If she cannot, she will be no better off than if she had been in the war.
 Europe's troubles with the old lan- guages is that they are worn, rusted, eroded, emasculated. shattered, and blown to smithereens. With the words it is as with the guns. It's worse. Kaiser Will helm and Kaiser Franz Josef can still fire shots from the ir eroded Thick Berthas' and their 17-inch Skoda Pil- sener howitzers Joffre with his 75-milli- metre quickfirers can send Kaiser Will helm s men to heaven or hell according to your taste in politics and .lansuage); ; there are still some houses and churches standing, and all fortresses have not been lost. But the waste attrition. annihilation of words of abuse goes much further. Every single swear word or cuss word has been worn to threads or torn to bits: and not one has been replaced. Nobody seeks to replace them. There is no minister of cusses. And soon the war may come to an inglorious end because nothing has been left to cuss.
 Fourteen months of war have done the work Since the tragic August l. 1914, Europe has been recl<lessly expend- ing it's stock of language. Since August l, 1914 citizens of all the belligerent states and millions of neutrals with pro- nounced sympathies have been shooting off with quiclltiring volubility and Rabelaisian exuberance all the cuss words they can get. When they have shot off all their 17-inch Krupp motar nouns, brute, fiend, devil, murderer, Hun, yer min, reptile, they have turned on their 19-inch howitZer adjectives, hellish, bloody, swinelike, sulphuric. No one can stand the temptation to fire a shot. Well bred men with effeminate tongues who in peace times never said anything dread fuller than 'by jove!'' have been turned by war emotion into linguistic aerial tor pedoes and fougasse-mines of cuss rhetoric. Without using a single word that is not a cuss they can tell how ''the Blanklanders kill their mothers, pois- on their brothers, eat their wounded, and roast to death nuns, sheep and pancakes. And the Blan<landers, using only exple- lives, can tell how the Dashlanders skin babes: boil priests and with hydraulic presses send the blood of prisoners ooz- ing from under the finger nails.' D., B. G., H., K, Y, bawls wildly e-tongued Europe. When it gets to Z-, the last inexpressively expressive eX- pletive it takes rest, and groans at the insufficiency of the eXiguous human tongue
 This buggy war of words has just the same effect on cussers and on listeners as has the din of real battle You get used to it. When you first reach the trenches in real war, you are stunned by the bang, rattle, clap, road. reverbera- tion. Your head aches and you want to run away. Or to put corks in your ears as did Philosopher Herbert Spencer when his visitors began talking about helps. When you have been day in the trenches this changes. Your head ceases to ache. your ears cease to buzz; you get used to the battle roar. After a time you notice nothing at all; you begin to think that war is placid and noiseless and an ex- plodng brisant shell seems to make no more fuss than egg thrown at a rival politician in the stirring days of peace.
 It is exactly the same with war cuss- ing It dulls the senses by excess. sAnd there is excess everywhere. If you open 4 newspaper or read a speech from any belligerent state-from England, France. Germany, Russia-it is 100000 to l you come upon:
 German fiend.
 Vaurien allemand-which means Ger man Scoundrel.
 Gross Britannisches tier-whlch means great British beast. B
 Avstriiski tohort-which is Russ for Aus trial devil.
 Also the Servans and Montenegrlns have rich graceful language munitions Alone the Turks the late Professor Yam bery said so) have no cuss words. That proves their irredeemable barbarity and makes friends of civilization hope that the Dardaneles will soon fall and the city