Europe is of one piece only when people look at her from the outside. There were few Europeans in 1939. The national differences were profound. From Albanians and Andorrans to Serbs and Turks: there were more European nations than there are letters of the alphabet." I wrote these sentences 20 years ago.* What I said about Europe then is also true of Europe today, with one important difference.

The nations of Europe have become, in their social composition, Americanized. Some time around 1920 something happened in the United States that has no precedent in the history of mankind. Previously, the structure of every society resembled a pyramid, with the relatively few rich and powerful on the top, the impoverished and, by and large, powerless masses on the bottom, and the middle class, or classes, somewhere in between, within the tapering sides of the pyramid. By the 1920s, however...