Confronted with this threat, which carries with it the negation of the very idea which lies at the heart of the construction of Europe, nothing must deter us: not the legal quibbling about what the treaty does or does not permit, not the legitimate questions about the right to intervene, not the derisory respect for formal democracy, and, above all, not the feeling of powerlessness which grips us in the face of an event which we reject with all the force of our convictions but which we are powerless to control.