No Disease

H. L. Mencken's theories of the " American language " met the ridicule of speakers before the Conference of British and American Professors of English at Columbia. Dr. Henry Van Dyke of Princeton referred to the suggestion of an American language as being either " a specimen of American humor " or " a serious enormity." Dr. F. N. Scott, of Michigan, speaking of Mr. Mencken's translation of the Declaration of Independence said: " That Mr. Mencken has failed to perceive the gulf between the sterile vulgarity of his performance and the massive dignity of the original, is for Americans not a matter of ridicule, but for the hair shirt and the lash, for tears of shame and self-abasement." If Dr. Scott really means all that he should refrain from reading the newspapers. Mr. Mencken's translation may be and undoubtedly is as uninspired as all the rest of the prose and verse which has been done into American, but none of it is worth a rhetorical flourish. Mr. Mencken is a symptom, not a disease.