I seem to have spent the last week eating six-course dinners in cellars
with grizzled sky-blue colonels, endeavouring to reply to their charming
compliments in a mixture of Gaelic and CORNELIUS NEPOS. I myself had no
intention of babbling these jargons; it is the fault of my tongue, which
takes charge on these occasions, and seems to be under the impression that,
when it is talking to a foreigner, any foreign language will do.

Atkins, I notice, also suffers from a form of the same delusion. When
talking to a Frenchman, he employs a mangled cross between West Coast and
China pidgin, and by placing a long E at the end of every word imagines he
is making himself completely clear to the suffering Gaul. And the suffering
Gaul listens to it all with incredible patience and courtesy, and, what is
more, somehow or other disentangles a meaning, thereby proving himself the
most intelligent creature on earth.

We have always prided ourselves that the teaching of modern languages in
our island seminaries is unique; but such is not the case. Here and there
in France, apparently, they teach English on the same lines. I discovered
this, the other day, when we called on a French battery to have the local
tactical situation explained to us. I was pushed forward as the star
linguist of our party; the French produced a smiling Captain as theirs. The
non-combatants of both sides then sat back and waited for their champions
to begin. I felt a trifle nervous myself, and the Frenchman didn't seem too
happy. We filled in a few minutes bowing, saluting, kissing and shaking
hands, and then let Babel loose, I in my fourth-form French, and he, to my
amazement, in equally elementary English. The affair looked hopeless from
the start; if either of us would have consented to talk in his own
language, the other might have understood him, but neither of us could,
before that audience, with our reputations at stake.