FORMIDABLE!

We have criticized the Germans enough, who, before the war, used the adjective kolossal in everything. "Kolossal!" and they had said it all.

We have found better or worse. There is not a young man, not a young woman in the best world for whom the adjective formidable does not today replace all the epithets in the world. Formidable, Miss Mistinguett; formidable, Miss Mistinguett's dresses; formidable, the congestion of the boulevard and formidable the car that covers its kilometer in 35". The lunch you have just made is formidable, whether it is good or bad, whether it is light or copious.

It is formidable that this word formidable is so cumbersome. We must all the same put an end to it, we must do away with it, condemn it, make give pledges to the one who uses it, to the one who only uses it. The vainest, the stupidest must look for another. Thank God, we do not hear that this simpleton uses the proper word, nor that this flirt uses only an epithet that fits, but if, each time that formidable, so formidably exasperating, is pronounced in front of you, you threaten those who use it with a formidable punishment, you will perhaps arrive at a formidable reaction and I swear to you that I will be, personally, formidable delighted.

D.