These three recurrences in August suggest that a reflection on Europe is timely: the birth of Altiero Spinelli on August 31, 1907; the founding meeting of the European Federalist Movement in Milan on August 27 and 28, 1943; and the death of Alcide de Gasperi on August 19, 1954.

Spinelli and De Gasperi, two Italian statesmen, belong to a group of men and women who, in the early 1940s with many countries in the throes of war, started thinking of an alternative to unending wars. Spinelli ended up creating Europe on an island.