Sparks: Berlin urges stronger European defence

How long will a republic built on the shifting sand of another's goodwill, and not the bedrock of its own martial virtue, pretend it is not already a client state in all but name?

A confederation's plea for collective security remains a moral sentiment until it builds the treasury and the standing army that make such a plea unnecessary.

The prince who relies on the mercenary's sword wakes to find its hilt in another's hand, a lesson Berlin now learns not from a treatise but from the empty barracks.

This sudden zeal for self-reliance masks a more profound ressentiment, the slave’s morality that first demanded protection and now curses the protector’s price.

Five thousand troops withdrawn, one Friday announcement, a single disputed account - the data point that reveals the system’s fragility for those who count.

And ain't a nation that built its own industry and its own democracy a woman, strong enough to forge her own shield?

A polity educated for decades in the soft virtues of dependence cannot suddenly be expected to display the reasoned fortitude of self-reliance.

It is an admirable custom, this practice of entrusting one's very walls to a foreign power, and then expressing a very civilized surprise when the keys are taken back.

That same merchant class which cheers the free market in goods suddenly demands a monopoly on defense, the most vital service of all.

Wager then on your own strength, for if you bet on another’s constancy and lose, you lose everything.

The abandoned creation, cobbled together from its maker's surplus parts, is now commanded to become its own maker or perish.

To understand the true state of an alliance, one must not interview the generals but the cook whose kitchen now serves five thousand fewer mouths.

Hateful thing: a silk banner, beautifully embroidered with another's crest, hung over a gate that has no bolt of its own.

'We are working to understand the decision,' says the press release, a sentence that confesses its own ignorance while pretending to activity.