Germany falling

You are leaving the civilised sector. These words were pinned, in German and English, to the outside of the fence which protects the American embassy in Berlin. In order to get through that fence, you would have to persuade the gallant, bone-headed men of the Bundesgrenzschutz – Germany’s frontier police, who also guard government buildings – that you are not intent on blowing up the Americans. Meanwhile you can take the chance to study the messages left by German peace protesters, of which the general drift is that George Bush is a mass murderer.

It would be easy, on the basis not only of these messages but also of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s foreign policy, to dwell at some length on the anti-Americanism that has become so visible in Germany. But to give an accurate and exhaustive account of that phenomenon would require, as Beerbohm might have said, a far less brilliant pen than mine.