r edition of the large dictionary.]

[Sidenote: Its trustworthiness.]

I suppose that thirty years ago it would have been almost impossible
to find any German who could speak English so well as to pass for
a native: they spoke as Du Maurier delighted to represent them in
_Punch_. During the late war, however, it has been no uncommon thing
for a German soldier to disguise himself in English uniform and
enter our trenches, relying on his mastery of our tongue to escape
suspicion; and it was generally observed how many German prisoners
spoke English _like a native_. Now this was wholly due to their having
been taught Southern English on Mr. Jones' model and method.

Again, those who would repudiate the facts that I am about to
reveal, and who will not believe that in their own careless talk
they themselves actually pronounce the words very much as Mr. Jones
prints them,[18] should remember that the sounds of speech are now
mechanically recorded and reproduced, and the records can be compared;
so that it would betray incompetence for any one in Mr. Jones'
position to misrepresent the facts, as it would be folly in him to go
to the trouble and expense of making such a bogus book as his would be
were it untrue; nor could he have attained his expert reputation had
he committed such a folly.

[Footnote 18: This is a very common condition. The habitual
pronunciation is associated in the mind with the familiar eye-picture
of the literary printed spelling so closely that it is difficult for
the speaker to believe that he is not uttering the written sounds; but
he is not competent to judge his own speech. For instance, almost all
Englishmen believe that the vowel which we write _u_ in _but_, _ugly_,
_unknown_, &c., is really a _u_, like the _u_ in _full_, and not a
disguised _a_; and because the written _s_ is sometimes voiced they
cannot distinguish between _s_ and _z_, nor without great difficulty
separate among the plural terminations those that are spoken with an
_s_ from those that are spoken with a _z_. I was shocked when I first
discovered my own delusions in such matters, and I still speak the bad
Southern English that I learnt as a child and at school. I can hardly
forgive my teachers and would not myself be condemned in a like
reprobation.]

Again, and in support of the trustworthiness of the records, I am
told by those concerned in the business that for some years past no
Englishman could obtain employment in Germa