"Permit me to begin this letter with a brief description of my knowledge of, and affection for, your country. I first came to Germany as a boy student aged 13 in 1952, two years before you were born. After three extended vacations with German families who spoke no English I found at the age of 16 and to my pleasure that I could pass for German among Germans.
I also had occasion in those years to visit the many thousands of my countrymen who held the line of the Elbe against 50,000 Soviet main battle tanks and thus kept Germany free to recover, modernize and prosper at no defense cost to herself.
And from inside the Cold War I saw our decades of effort to defeat the Soviet empire and set your East Germany free.
I was therefore disappointed last Friday to see you take the part of a small and vindictive Frenchman in what can only be seen as a targeted attack on the land of my fathers.
It is not just a few greedy bankers; we both have those but the City of London is far more. It is indeed a vast banking agglomeration of more banks than anywhere else in the world. But that is the tip of the iceberg. Also in the City is the world’s greatest concentration of insurance companies.
Add to that the brokers; traders in stocks and shares worldwide, second only, and then maybe not, to Wall Street. But it is not just stocks. The City is also home to the “exchanges” of gold and precious metals, diamonds, base metals, commodities, futures, derivatives, coffee, cocoa… the list goes on and on.
Yet in Brussels last week the EU pack seemed intent only on venting its spleen on the country that wisely refused to abolish its pound. You did not even address yourselves to saving the euro but only to seeking a way to ensure it might work in some future time.
But the euro will not be saved. It is crumbling now. And since you have now turned against my country, from this side of the Channel, Madame Chancellor, one can only say of the euro: YOU MADE IT, YOU MEND IT."
Note EU-Digest: the open letter to Mrs. Angela Merkel by Frederik Forsyth of the Express seems to confirm once again how chauvinistic and arrogant the British can be. Germany and for that matter all of Europe do not consider any country an enemy, like Mr. Forsyth claims it does. The EU bases its judgement about other countries on their trustfulness and commitment. Britain unfortunately often has shown that it does not meet that criteria.
As to the EU. In this context it is important to remember that when the British were fighting the "rebels" of their American colonies, that Benjamin Franklin drew a cartoon ( see illustration) about the "disunited state" of the colonies.
This cartoon of a snake cut in pieces showed how important it was for the colonies to be united. The image became a potent symbol of American colonial unity and resistance to what was seen as British oppression. There was a superstition that a snake which had been cut into pieces would come back to life if the pieces were put together before sunset.
The playing field might have changed this time around, but the scenario applied by Britain to Europe is still the same. The EU, like the US in the time of American Revolution, when Benjamin Franklin drew the cartoon of the snake, must therefore make a major effort to strengthen their commitment to remain united if they want to stop the forces which are trying to dismantle and destroy it.
Express.co.uk - Home of the Daily and Sunday Express | Columnists :: An open letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel
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