[Footnote 1: No doubt all these variations of American from British
usage will be duly discussed in Professor George Philip Krapp's
forthcoming _History of the English Language in America_.]



IV


As the military vocabulary of English is testimony to the former
leadership of the French in the art of war, so the vocabulary of fashion
and of gastronomy is evidence of the cosmopolitan primacy of French
millinery and French cookery. But most of the military terms were
absorbed before the middle of the seventeenth century and were therefore
assimilated, whereas the terms of the French dressmaker and of the
French cook, chef, or _cordon bleu_, are being for ever multiplied in
France and are very rarely being naturalized in English-speaking lands.
So far as these two sets of words are concerned the case is probably
hopeless, because, if for no other reason, they are more or less in the
domain of the gentler sex and we all know that

'A woman, convinced against her will,
Is of the same opinion still.'


The terms of the motor-car, however, and those of the airplane, are in
the control of men; and there may be still a chance of bringing about a
better state of affairs than now exists. While the war correspondents
were actually in France, and while they were often forced to write at