'Elites favour federations like the European Union. Non-elites revolt.'

A taxi driver in Belgrade told a British friend of mine, who lives there, that Yugoslavia was the EU before the EU. My friend, who  is an ardent believer in the EU, found this discouraging, as well he might.

'Elites favour federations like the European Union. Non-elites revolt.' 

This is the headline on an article in the Washington Post that points out that, in addition to Yugoslavia, the USSR, Czechoslovakia, the West Indies Federation, the Central African Federation and the United Arab Republic are failed attempts at subsuming nations or ethnic groups into multinational states.

So,of course, was the Hapsburg Empire though that in its time was a great success. My British-Hungarian-Russian-Jewish but 100% British friend, and ardent Brexiteer avant la lettre, Helen Szamuely justly called it a European Union that worked, but it stop working in 1918, partly thanks to Francis Joseph's folly in going to war with Serbia but more due to the malign influence of liberal American Democrats. 

There is no end to the harm that they have wreaked in the world, though George W. Bush, a Wilsonian in foreign policy, and Lincoln are responsible for more unnecessary deaths than even the Democrats.

Malaysia has stayed the course, but without some of its original components, to wit Singapore, Sarawak and Sabah.

The tragedy, of course, is that a united Germany and Italy ever came into existence or did not break up before Hitler or Mussolini could come to power. 

It is still not too late for Bavaria to seek her independence or for the Italian principalities. 

On a recent visit to Palermo the first person I met was demonstrating in favour of an independent Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. We were fated to meet. I wished him very well and parted from him with a leaflet and wearing one of his badges. It was not much, but one does what one can.