Letters
Does Europe exist?
Sir: How much I agree with Christopher Booker that 'Europe' is a fantasy — and how much I dispute that it is harmless! All this `forging of ties' has been tried before: an astonishing parallel occurred under that unstable conglomerate, the 'Austrian' Empire, whose very name was a misnomer concocted to 'Designate . portions of the possessions of the house of Habsburg. .
The 1910 edition of, the Encyclopaedia Britannica (from which my quotations are taken) could afford to be supercilious about the squabbles of those pretty princelings, but isn't it instructive for us today to observe that it was the so-called `Liberals' of the day who performed the desperate and unseemly contortion of dreaming up `a centralised parliament and democracy'? `They hoped by a common parliament to create the feeling of a common Austrian nationality.' (My italics.) Thus while their masters were arguing whether to raise the excise on sugar, brandy, textiles, or corn, and were `granting a subvention to the great shipping companies, the Austrian Lloyd and Adria', it must have been bitter for the Czechs, Poles, Slovenes, Ruthenians and others, (who were struggling for the right even to speak their own languages) to know that the real aim of 'Habsburg imperialism was to preserve the economic and military unity' of their shaky regime.
Howard Corbishley 7 Cleveland Court, London W13
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