authentic reports received by it from Manchuria."

Here eyewitnesses, their accuracy unknown, report to the makers of
'authentic reports'; they in turn transmit these to a commission five
thousand miles away. It prepares a statement, probably much too long
for publication, from which a correspondent culls an item of print
three and a half inches long. The meaning has to be telescoped in such
a way as to permit the reader to judge how much weight to give to the
news.

It is doubtful whether a supreme master of style could pack all the
elements of truth that complete justice would demand into a hundred
word account of what had happened in Korea during the course of
several months. For language is by no means a perfect vehicle of
meanings. Words, like currency, are turned over and over again, to
evoke one set of images to-day, another to-morrow. There is no
certainty whatever that the same word will call out exactly the same
idea in the reader's mind as it did in the reporter's. Theoretically,
if each fact and each relation had a name that was unique, and if
everyone had agreed on the names, it would be possible to communicate
without misunderstanding. In the exact sciences there is an approach
to this ideal, and that is part of the reason why of all forms of
world-wide cooperation, scientific inquiry is the most effective.

Men command fewer words than they have ideas to express, and language,
as Jean Paul said, is a dictionary of faded metaphors. [Footnote:
Cited by White, _Mechanisms of Character Formation._] The
journalist addressing half a million readers of whom he has only a dim
picture, the speaker whose words are flashed to remote villages and
overseas, cannot hope that a few phrases will carry the whole burden