papal bull which declared the infallibility of contemporary Brit- ish orthography, and as to the place where the council of the Church was held at which it was made an article of faith."[1] This was written more than a quarter of a century ago. Since then there has been a lessening of violence, but the opposition still continues. No self-respecting English author would yield up the -our ending for an instant, or write check for cheque, or transpose the last letters in the -re words.
Nevertheless, American spelling makes constant gains across the water, and they more than offset the occasional fashions for English spellings on this side. Schele de Vere, in 1867, con- soled himself for Webster's "arbitrarily imposed orthography" by predicting that it could be "only temporary" that, in the long run, "North America depends exclusively on the mother- country for its models of literature." But the event has blasted this prophecy and confidence, for the English, despite their furi- ous reluctance, have succumbed to Webster more than once. The New English Dictionary, a monumental work, shows many silent concessions, and quite as many open yieldings for exam- ple, in the case of ax, which is admitted to be "better than axe on every ground." Moreover, English usage tends to march ahead of it, outstripping the liberalism of its editor, Sir James A. H. Murray. In 1914, for example, Sir James was still pro- testing against dropping the first e from judgement, a character- istic Americanism, but during the same year the Fowlers, in their Concise Oxford Dictionary, put judgment ahead of judge- ment; and two years earlier the Authors' and Printers' Diction- ary, edited by Horace Hart,[2] had dropped judgement alto- gether. Hart is Controller of the Oxford University Press, and the Authors' and Printers' Dictionary is an authority accepted by nearly all of the great English book publishers and news- papers. Its last edition shows a great many American spellings. For example, it recommends the use of jail and jailer in place
