Europe is running out of hope Trump is still open to persuasion over Ukraine

Where the US president sees a convivial leader an ocean away, Europeans see a tyrant on its borders breaking all agreements

In the Four Quartets TS Eliot wrote humankind cannot bear very much reality".

At moments in history like these, when there is simply too much head-spinning change and too many postwar assumptions being ripped from their moorings, it sometimes appears too much for any human to absorb, let alone offer a response.