The Europeans [antikvár]

T Xh: -here are so many simple and obvious reasons why the venerable and illustrious countries occupying the jagged western rump of Asia, occasionally pecking at each other like irritable hens or quarreling with the United States, should form what the Americans (who, by their very nature, have never been satisfied with mere perfection) would call "a more perfect union," and why they should do it immediately, today, tomorrow morning at the latest, without wasting one more hour or waiting for one more windy and inconclusive meeting of experts, that only a few fanatics are left who bother to exalt or mock the idea. There is, to begin with, one irrational emotional reason, which should not be entirely disregarded. Irrational emotions move bigger multitudes and shape events more easily than cold economic, scientific, or sociological motivations. It could be called "the European Dream." It is many centuries old. Dante described, in De Monarchic, the vague hope of seeing the Continent pacified under one sovereign. It was proposed as a cure-all by great princes, emperors, statesmen, thinkers, poets, and starry-eyed idealists down the centuries. Nothing ever came of it, yet it never died. It was advocated (I quote only a handful of names) by Kant, Novalis, Voltaire, Rousseau, Lamartine, Michelet, Victor Hugo, Cobden, Saint-Simon, Bentham, Mazzini, Cattaneo, Gioberti, and Garibaldi. The European cause was embraced equally by obdurate conservatives such as Klemens Metternich and revolutionary apostles such as Pierre Proudhon. Aristide Briand, the French foreign minister, solemnly proposed the creation of the United States of Europe to the League of Nations on September 5, 1929, in a memorable speech written for him by his chef de cabinet, Marie