Tuesday 21 August 2007

Finally Facing Our Waterloo?

Since Sunday's World This Weekend, not a peep out of the British media about the quite plausible impending dissolution of a country whose capital has a direct rail link to central London and contains the headquarters of the EU, and whose Royal House is even called Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.

Latins (nay, very Francophones) might declare UDI at any moment. Is it conceivable that France and Francophone Africa might recognise such a declaration? Is it conceivable that they might not! And they might very well be joined by Italy, Spain, Portugal, and every country where either Spanish or Portuguese is spoken. Meanwhile, UDI in Wallonia would light the touchpaper for UDI in Quebec.

Or Teutons might declare UDI at any moment. Ever since the incorporation of the Catholic South, there has been a certain inevitability about the eventual annexation of Flanders to the Netherlands should Belgium ever fall apart, even if that would have to be on some sort of federal basis now. Could Germany stay out? She could not, and ever since she disastrously recognised Croatia and Slovenia in some cack-handed attempt to restopre Austria-Hungary, it has been clear that has no desire to stay out of such matters.

Not least, the eastern-most part of Wallonia is German-speaking, and was part of the Kingdom of Prussia until the Treaty of Versailles. The last German World Cup squad included a startling number of players from Austria, Silesia, Alsace-Lorraine and the Sudetenland. Think on.

And then, if this all kicked off, there is increasingly divided and unhappy Switzerland...

At the present time, is there any crisis in Europe more significant than this one? Are there very many in the whole world? And look how very close to Britain it all is. Yet scarcely a word in the British media.

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