Cousins

By Donald Morrison

THE EUROPEANS

by Luigi Barzini

Simon & Schuster; 267pages; $14.95

Ah, Europe: cradle of culture and liberty, land of a hundred dialects, a thousand wines, 200 million opinions. Luigi Barzini, veteran journalist and author of a 1964 bestseller about his own tribe, The Italians, looks upon the Continent's rich diversity of tradition and thought--and despairs.

Despite compelling economic and security arguments for unity, Europeans remain a bunch of squabbling cousins. "What," he wonders, "are the obscure forces preventing the coagulation of Western Europe into a solid whole, as easily as liquid milk curdles into a block of fresh cheese as soon as the rennet is dropped into it?" The most apparent obstacle, he suggests, is national pride, the belief of each country that it alone "has contributed in a decisive manner to European (and the world's) civilization."

According to Barzini's saline account, one of Britain's most potent gifts to Europe was the black suit, a Continental uniform during the 19th century. This austere garment symbolized the qualities of sobriety, decency and steadiness that, along with those prodigious coal mines, allowed Britain to dominate the world for decades. The dark myth of British superiority persisted long after the country's decline, and led Britain in the 1950s to a disastrous delay in condescending to join the Common Market.

Now, Barzini observes, "nobody wears black unless he has to, and the empire has gone the ways of Nineveh and Tyre, its domination of the world is over, the awesome fleet and the tentacular intelligence service are but memories, and the sagacity of its statesmen almost (but not entirely) vanished." Nevertheless, says Barzini, the Britons realize their limitations. Helas, the French do not. They insist upon being treated as Europe's grandest military, economic, cultural and gustatory power. In fact, he notes, "foreigners have to remind themselves they are not dealing with a country that really exists, a country many of them love, with its admirable past and its actual respectable achievements, potentials, and capacities, but with a country that most Frenchmen dream still exists." That, he suggests, is why the French are "best led with consoling and inebriating half truths."

The Italians, by contrast, are trying to shed their past. "It is not true that they enjoy and are at their best living precariously in a disorderly country," insists the author. Instead, "they have dreamed the same impossible dream of being one day governed with freedom and justice, of being able to dedicate their energies solely to their work and not to the task of avoiding cramping and frustrating laws or defending themselves from dangerous and powerful enemies." Paesanos fantasize about "living an honorable, transparent life in peace in an honorable, transparent country in which there should be no need to lie. The dream can be traced down the centuries in many documents, books, poems and paintings." Che sfortuna, a handful of Italians, most of them politicians, do not share that vision, and pandemonium reigns.

Barzini is wariest of his neighbors to the north. He believes with Nietzsche that "the German soul has corridors, caves, hiding-places, dungeons; the German is acquainted with the hidden paths to chaos." Postwar West Germany may now be as tame as pre-Bismarck Germany, he concedes, but there remain troubling streaks of romanticism, fickleness and compulsion. He believes that all Germans dream of reunification; as a result, their partners fear they might succumb to a separate deal with the Soviets.

Barzini's most piquant chapter is devoted to that most "peculiarly European nation," the U.S. This "annex" of Europe has blood ties to the old soil; it is even proudly producing more and more excellent wines. And, like its fellow countries, it suffers from Barzini's law: "Nations, organizations, institutions, bodies or single human beings are never as powerful, intelligent, farseeing, efficient and dangerous as they seem to their enemies."

Accordingly, the U.S. stares suspiciously at the Soviet Union, which stares back; and France, Italy, Britain, Germany bristle at one another. The only immediate way to unite this jittery group would be "the Soviet way, by the neutralization of all Europe," and this is "against the nature of things." Conclusion: "One must be content with what there is, for the time being anyway. The future is in the laps of the gods." That has been its location all along, of course, and Barzini, like any good Italian, is happy to let it rest there.

Luigi Barzini, 74, is Atlantic Man personified. He was born in Milan, educated at Columbia University and regularly commutes between Europe and the U.S. Even to nonreaders in Italy, his lined, expressive face seems as familiar as a character actor's. For 14 years he was a Liberal deputy in the Italian parliament, resigning in 1972 to become a full-time writer. Today Barzini enjoys his role of gentleman-farmer among the olive groves and vineyards of an estate north of Rome. There he recently reminisced with a longtime acquaintance, TIME Paris Bureau Chief Jordan Bonfante. A sampling of Barzini's views:

On meeting Adolf Hitler in 1934. He looked like someone out of a circus--a clown. He had that strange mustache. His ideas were out of this world. I thought he would be there just for a few months.

On Charles de Gaulle. He was the most impressive leader I ever met, far-seeing in a certain way, and yet a man of the 19th century. He knew the French very well; that is why his foreign policy was so well accepted: defense of French dignity and grandeur.

On Franc,ois Mitterrand. He is a very reasonable man in foreign affairs, less timid than Georges Pompidou and Valery Giscard d'Estaing. We can only approve of Mitterrand's foreign policy. But he has inherited an unfortunate situation which he cannot change: French military strategy.

On President Reagan. He represents a certain tendency in foreign policy conduct, the best example of which was Teddy Roosevelt. They both believe that America is the repository of certain fundamental truths, and America must make them triumph all over the world. From this comes American impatience and, sometimes. American intervention.

On Margaret Thatcher. She is somewhat the same sort. Like Reagan, she comes from the provincial middle class, and, like Reagan, she inherited the ideals of other generations, which are still alive in a large part of the British public. The Falklands war can be compared to the last victorious expedition of the Republic of Venice [in 1786], only a few years before her end, against the Bey of Tunis.

On prospects for European integration. Past attempts, like those of Napoleon and Hitler, were to unite Europe by war. There could be an economic depression of such magnitude that the Europeans would have to join forces. Or the rise of a magnetic personality who could dominate all of Europe. None of these would I look forward to. Perhaps the best thing is to trust in the slow progress of reason. --By Donald Morrison This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.