It can happen to the best of us.

Madame de Gaulle was said to have been lunching with the American ambassador at the time of her husband's retirement when she was asked what she was most looking forward to in the years ahead.

She thought for a moment before announcing boldly: "a penis". A startled hush fell over the table until the former president leant over and said: "My dear, I think its pronounced 'happiness'." *

How much more can be said about misunderstandings in the process of European unification. And this is only the franco-british opposition. Count in Mediterranean/North-Seaish, Catholic/Protestant/Orthodox/Mulim, what Mr. Rumsfeld cald Old/New etc. and you will know about what kind of culture gaps I talk about.

Most of the time the speed and historical course of the integration process, linguistic, cultural, religious and ethnic, in the US of A is overestimated. But at latest from WWI and into the twenties when American anti-Germanism and antisemitism got their first heyday the domination of English language newspapers, radio and school education developed an integrational force that only ran out in 80ies when it showed that a new non integrated and strong Latino culture is not really touched by it anymore.

I have wondered more than 1 time how Europe should ever become the US of E with most of the Jews gone and England and France (and Italy, Germany and Spain) still clinging to their national government financed cultural identity programs. Mostly so every time I talked to a French programmer who by chance did neither know what a file was nor what a hard drive would be and I had to think hard that it was a fichier and a disque dur respectively.

This is also the day when the British remember with bitterness that contrarily to the end of WWI the French did not stamper the Germans down but with them founded the European Coal and Steel Community, from which the Union stems. Well, Italians, Dutch, Belgians and Luxemburgers where in that racket to, but to the English it just meant they had clinged to the Entente Cordiale for 47 years, through good and bad, only to see France go back to her traditional European, alliances based and continental domination oriented policy 6 years after her costly liberation by the English speaking peoples of this world.

Want to read more, dig this Daily Mail Story: D-Day snub to Queen: Palace fury as Sarkozy refuses to invite royals to 65th Anniversary