It is the news of the day that the European Commission has just announced an agreement, whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility. Now that customs barriers have been abrogated, that all member States have adopted a single monetary currency, and that a common passport reunites all Europeans under the same flag, the next logical step was to have a common language denominator.

Americans in particular will appreciate the paramount importance of a single, common language and medium of communication. How would the United States look and sound like if, for example, people spoke German on the East Coast, English in the Midwest, French in California and Italian in the Deep South? Certainly it would be enough to give Ol