Born in Vienna, caught in France by the war, I am old enough to remember escaping from the Germans, the sensation of hunger, and the shudder of bombs. A soldier myself in due course, I was stationed with the British army near Düsseldorf, in the Rhineland. At the time, shopkeepers in the mighty Königsallee running through that city used to operate from smashed piles of rubble, their stock of goods on a single tray. Today the Königsallee is a consumer’s mecca, and as expensive as real estate anywhere. Much was obliterated or looted in the war, but governments and the whole range of developers have since carried the process further. Hardened old Europe, as Henry James called it, could evidently absorb an awful lot of ruin.

The softened new Europe is not without merit. Nobody starves. Bombs drop only in faraway countries of which we know nothing, like Bosnia. Germans have acquired a democratic outlook. Cities sprout steel girders and ...

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