Letter from the Continent

Integration Pains

Italy’s risorgimento, a hundred years ago, came about by revolution and conquest. Germany achieved unification by the decision of princes who imposed their new order on their subjects. The Hapsburg empire, in earlier days, resulted from several clever marriages. The present growing-together of Europe, however, derives from very sober reflections by some of our leading men, supported by enlightened opinion. In a way, the European confederacy gestates on the camping grounds of the Mediterranean, where the peoples of Europe babble at each other in some sort of pidgin English, derived from the language of the one power most reluctant to become merged in the Continent.