— Victim. of
tells his story well

United States, which had be-
come his home, and where his

AM for every topic openly,”

Walt Whitman said. “I am
in earnest — I will not equivo-
cate — I will not excuse —
I will not retreat a single inch,
and I will be heard,” said Wil-
liam Lloyd Garrison.

What would they have to say
about America now? One fan-
cies they too would have FBI
men lounging at the corner of
the block and find themselves
asked the @ld familiar ques-
tion — “Are you now or have
you-ever been... .7”

They aren’t here now, of
course, but others of their
stamp are — men and women
who are still “for every topic
openly” and who doubt whe-
ther you can ride to democracy
in a police truck.

Among them, Cedric Bel-
frage. He founded the National
_ Guardian in 1948 and made it

into a voice of dissent when
dissent was badly needed and
hard to come by. Now he has
Written the story of his last
months in the United States,
in The Frightened Giant (ob-
tainable in Vancouver at the
People’s Co-op Bookntore, 337
West Pender Street, price
$3.75),

He spent them in West Street
jail in New York. He had
been charged wi htno crime,
and because of this apparently
disadvantageous fact he could
not get bail. He was awaiting
deportation to Britain as a
political undesirable.

t bes %

His account of the three
months of his life owned to him
by the U.S. government is with-
Out rancor or malice. It is full
of warmth for his fellow-men
— including a strange assort-
ment of inmates at-West Street
— full of wry humor, and with
bolitical wisdom aplenty.

_ It should be read because it
Sa fascinating and_heart-
Warming book, and also be-
Cause Belfrage is entitled to
ave his case known by the
People of the “free world.”
He had, of’ course, been
through the usual squalid
Tound of “hearings” — the Un-
merican Committee, the Mc-
arthy Committee, the Immi-

Sration Services and sundry
Judges,

. Belfrage was a British sub-
Ject, After many years in the

Pid

cold war

children were born, he had
been denied citizenship be-
cause he had worked for Brit-
ish Intelligence in the war. He
was thus fair game for deporta-
tion.

His book explains all this
and is likely to make those who
have not followed ‘the gyra-
tions of the last two U.S. at-
torney-generals gasp.

Bes % i.

It also tells you about West
Street. :

Here Belfrage met as fascin-
ating a cross-section of the hu-
man species as any newspaper-
man could wish for.

There were the usual: crooks
large and small, the poor on,
their way to bad jails, the rich
on their way to the “country
club” jail at Danbury, where
absconding company directors,
corrupt Congressmen and
crooked officials go.

There were the victims of
the United States as it now is.
Manuel and _ Roberto, two
Puerto Rican youngsters who
had got into trouble and were
headed straight for a thorough-
going apprenticeship in crime.

Harvey Matusow, the weird
and twisted young man who
had sent some 150 innocent
people to jail while he was
a paid FBI informer, had then
denounced his own testimony
as perjured, and was now
charged not with the perjury
he had confessed: to but with
allegedly committing perjury
in denouncing his own earlier
evidence

Sidney Steinberg, a real live
Communist, who won the res-
pect and affection of prisoners
and guards alike and became
(as Belfrage himself became)
a combined father confessor
and letter writer, legal adviser
and buddy to countless in-
mates; 7”

Read The Frightened Giant.
It will tell you a lot about
the U.S. you do not know and
a number of things about plain
people that you’ll be glad to
be reminded of.

And in any case, the book
makes rattling good reading.
Belfrage is that unfortunately
rather rare bird: a man of
unshakable Socialist principles
who can write too.

DAVID GEORGE

MUSSORGSKY'S

“Boris Godunov”

based on Alexander Pushkin’s opera

te
Sa a\

FF
ye
fieN
=r

Fog

& in Colour

= \ Featuring the chorus, orchestra and ballet of the

BOLSHO!) OPERA COMPANY
ENGLISH TITLES

THURSCAY FRIDAY: SATURDAY
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KS

We have our own English usage
it's time for our own dictionary

ps this abridged text of a

recent CBC broadcast, Dr.
Walter Avis, teacher of En-
glish at the Royal Military
Qollege, Kingston, and secre-
tary-treasurer of the recently
organized Canadian Linguistic
Association, elaborates his ar-
guments for a Canadian dic-
tionary. “The canons of cor-
rectness in one English-speak-
ing country need not be- those
of aother . . .” he maintains.

$e mt 3

p recent years there has been

an increasing demand’ for
knowledge about Canadian
English; but we have a long
way to go before achieving
the linguistic awareness al-
ready enjoyed by the Ameri-
cans. Indeed, we know rela-
tively little about Canadian
English, simply » because we
have neglected the task of

finding out about it. We have.

been satisfied to look across
the ocean or across the border
for guidance,

The time has come to look to
ourselves, for Canada has
grown from colony to nation.
In searching for a sense of
national identity we must not
neglect our language, at least
within the English-speaking
community, binds us securely
together.

The fact is that Canadians
have a_ distinctive way of
speaking English. Informed
Americans and Britons recog-
nize us as Canadians by our
speech; it is high time Cana-
dians themselves became con-
scious of their linguistic ident-
ity.

To be sure, many of our
speech habits parallel Ameri-
can usage and many others
parallel British usage; still
others, however, parallel nei-
ther, being peculiarly Cana-
dian,

Taken as a whole, the lan-
guage of this country is neither
American nor British. Yet for
guidance in matters of “good
usage” we must turn to Ameri-
can or British dictionaries, none
of which even pretends to offer

the information we seek.
& a m

If, for example, you weré to
seek information. about the fol-
lowing words in your diction-
ary, chances are you would be
wasting your time: aboideau,
fiddlehead, mountie, pogey,
splake, blueline, face-off, rink-
rat, hockey cushion, snapback,
flying-wing, firereels, park-
land, mukluk, seigneury, bush-
line, paranurse, suitcase-farm-
er, pool train, concession road,
separate school, McGill fence.

Should you look up the
words McIntosh and snow, you
would find no reference to
apples; chesterfield would not

be defined as “a sofa” (if you _

asked where the chesterfields
were in an American depart-
ment store, you would in all
probability be directed to the
cigaret counter.)

Similar shortcomings can be
observed with reference to
pronunciation: khaki, for ex-
ample, is pronounced as
KAWKY by the British and as
KACKY by*the Americans,
whereas most Canadians of‘all
social classes say KARKY, a
form recorded in no dictionary
whatever. The typically Can-
adian prounciation of vase is
VAZE, but the availablable
dictionaries list this form as

‘a seldom-used variant of Brit-

ish VAWZ and American
VACE,
Indeed, much is unknown

about Canadian pronunciation
patterns. Certainly hundreds of
educated Canadians pronounce
the following words in a man-
ner unrecorded by most dic-
tionaries: senile, species, evil,
finale, clothes, nausea, culin-
ary, absurd, official, conduit,
jackal, placate, arctic.

The Canadian is on many oc-
casions faced with sheer frus-
tration when he has cause to
refer to a dictionary. There-
fore a dictionary based on
through-going speech habits is
an undeniable need among
educated Canadians.

Recognizing this need, the

‘recently formed Canadian Lin-

guistic Association has been

active in promoting the dic-
tionary movement which re-
flects the desire of many Can-’
adians for reliable information
about their languages, both
English and French.

The movément became a real-
ity two years ago, when a dis-
tinguished Canadian publish-
ing house donated a substantial
sum toward the establishing
of a foundation for linguistic
research, the immediate objec-
tive of which is a series of
dictionaries appropriate to this
counrty.

Although the foundation has
not as yet won: the financial
support it merits, work has
already begun on a French-
English dictionary based on
Canadian usage. This modest
undertaking, which is being
edited by Professors Jean-Paul
Vinay of the University of
Montreal and Henry Alexander
of Queen’s University, should
be available in 1959.

The royalties from the sale
of this and subsequent dic-
tionaries will be turned back
to the foundation and used to
promote other linguistic pro-
jects, one of these being a Dic-
tionary of Canadian English,
an exhaustive historical record
of the use of English in this
country.

The dictionary committee of
the CLA, whith is already
gathering citations for this dic-
tionary, is greatly strengthen-
ed by the active participation
of C. J: Lovell, who assisted
in compiling the Dictionary of
Americanisms and who is one
of the -few ranking lexico-
graphers in the field of North
American English.

Public response to recent
publicity suggests that the need
for a Canadian dictionary is
widely recognized. Such recog-
nition is essential to the suc-
cess of the movement, for with-
out support, both in goodwill -
and funds, the project will
surely die. If it does, Cana-
dians will have to make do
indefinitely with British and
American dictionaries, all of
which are inappropriate guides
to usage in Canada.

MARCH 29, 1957 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGE 13