Fifty years ago this week, the idea of Europe was set to paper, on a continent unsettled but past the worst of the postwar period. The air was clear of sulfur if not spleen. Ireland was a small rock in the North Atlantic made relevant only by its cultural totems and ever increasing diaspora. In Berlin a chasm was opening up between East and West--the partition of lives, fortunes and fates. In the global struggle between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., between freedom and totalitarianism, Europe was the fault line and the front line. Old Europe was being rebuilt to fight...
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