If we are willing to discuss French pronunciation at its very root, without the suspicion of an assumption, we shall have to begin by asking ourselves the searching question whether it is worth teaching at all. That is a fair question: we must not let even a special interest in phonetics blind us to its sanity. Of course the "practical" conversation-enthusiasts will promptly proclaim that a good pronunciation is the first and fundamental thing: there can be no possible doubt about it, since the object of languagestudy is to learn to speak, and a satisfactory pronunciation is a large part of correct speech. If, however, our conversational friends have no objections, we should like to ask them to think for a moment of the situation of the classics in England. If one may safely assert that the contribution of classical culture to the intellectual life of England has been significant-if Plato and Horace have meant something to English thought, in spite of a pronunciation more redolent of Oxford than of Athens or Tusculum-