To such discipline we have all been laudably amenable, and _morale_ has
seldom been seen in the London papers since 1914; but it, and not _moral_,
is the English word; we once all wrote it without thinking twice about the
matter; even in war-time one met it in the local newspapers that had not
time to keep up with London's latest tricks, and in those parts of the
London Press itself that had to use a tongue understanded of the people.
It is very refreshing to see that _morale_ is now beginning to show itself
again, timidly and occasionally, even in select quarters. The fact is,
these literary drill-sergeants have made a mistake; the English _morale_
is not a 'perversion of _the_ French word'; it is a phonetic respelling,
and a most useful one, of _a_ French word. We have never had anything to
do with the French word _morale_ (ethics, morality, a moral, &c.); but we
found the French word _moral_ (state of discipline and spirit in armies,
&c.) suited to our needs, and put an _e_ on to it to keep its sound
distinct from that of our own word _moral_, just as we have done with the
French _local_ (English _locale_) and the German _Choral_ (English
_chorale_), and as, using contrary means for the same end of fixing a
sound, we have turned French _diplomate_ into English _diplomat_. Our
English _forte_ ('Geniality is not his _forte_,' &c.) is altered from the
French _fort_ without even the advantage of either keeping the French
sound or distinguishing the spoken word from our _fort_; but who proposes
to sacrifice the reader's convenience by correcting the 'ignorant'
spelling? In the light of these parallels is it not the patrons of _moral_
who deserve the imputation of ignorance rather than we common folk? We do
not indeed profess to know what _moral_ and _morale_ mean in French, but
then that knowledge is irrelevant. They do not know the true English
method of dealing with borrowings from French; and that knowledge is
highly relevant.