Disgruntled Britons, still griping about the proposed $4.4 billion loan from the U.S., had a somewhat sour spokesman in one Tom Collins, London suburbanite. His comment, in a News Chronicle interview: "The loan should be liquidated by charging the U.S. a yearly rental for the use of the English language."
Snorted Baltimore's bellicose H. L. Mencken (The American Language): "I think they ought to charge us for it, but all to the Bostonians. They are the only ones who speak the English language in America. The rest of us speak American."
Possible compromise: let the tenant rent the language, but charge...
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