Asquith made their respective
speeches and committed the British Nation to the war.
Another unhappy use of language which has been noted in the public press
is due to the literal translation of words. Americans simply do not know
what the word Emperor means. To most of them it connotes the later Roman
Emperors, or the autocratic Czar of Russia, or the short-lived but
autocratic quality of Napoleon III., so that when we use the word
Emperor we are thinking of an absolutely non-existing personage, unless
it be the Czar of Russia.
We like very much to make sport of phrases from languages unfamiliar to
us, and we enjoy the jokes of ludicrous translations, and so we take
the term "Oberster Kriegsherr" and we translate it "Supreme War Lord."
What conception the average American forms of that is manifest. Whereas,
as a matter of fact--and this has already been pointed out both in
conversation and in public prints--the term means nothing in the world
but Commander in Chief of the German Empire, has not any different
relation whatsoever in the substance of its meaning than that which
Presidents of the United States have been in time of supreme danger to
the country.
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