An Englishman, in speaking or writing of public officials, avoids those long and clumsy combinations of title and name [Pg122] which figure so copiously in American newspapers. Such locutions as /Assistant Secretary of the Interior/ Jones, /Fourth Assistant Postmaster-General/ Brown, /Inspector of Boilers/ Smith, /Judge of the Appeal Tax Court/ Robinson, /Chief Clerk of the Treasury/ Williams and /Collaborating Epidermologist/ White[24] are quite unknown to him. When he mentions a high official, such as the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, he does not think it necessary to add the man's name; he simply says "the Secretary for Foreign Affairs" or "the Foreign Secretary." And so with the Lord Chancellor, the Chief Justice, the Prime Minister, the Bishop of Carlisle, the Chief Rabbi, the First Lord (of the Admiralty), the Master of Pembroke (College), the Italian Ambassador, and so on. Certain ecclesiastical titles are sometimes coupled to surnames in the American manner, as in /Dean Stanley/, and /Canon Wilberforce/, but /Prime Minister Lloyd-George/ would seem heavy and absurd. But in other directions the Englishman has certain clumsinesses of his own. Thus, in writing a letter to a relative stranger, he sometimes begins it, not /My dear Mr. Jones/ but /My dear John Joseph Jones/. He may even use such a form as /My dear Secretary for War/ in place of the American /My dear Mr. Secretary/. In English usage, incidentally, /My dear/ is more formal than simply /Dear/. In America, of course, this distinction is lost, and such forms as /My dear John Joseph Jones/ appear only as conscious imitations of English usage.
I have spoken of the American custom of dropping the definite article before /Hon./ It extends to /Rev./ and the like, and has the authority of very respectable usage behind it. The opening sentence of the /Congressional Record/ is always: "The Chaplain, /Rev./--------, D.D., offered the following prayer." When chaplains for the army or navy are confirmed by the Senate they always appear in the /Record as Revs./, never as /the Revs./ I also find the honorific without the article in the New International Encyclopaedia, in the /World/ Almanac, and in a widely-popular [Pg123] American grammar-book.[25] So long ago as 1867, Gould protested against this elision as barbarous and idiotic, and drew up the following /reductio ad absurdum/: