The desperation of these refugees has become the largest single contributor to that other horror story I described last week, the total shambles the EU and its member states are making of the Syrians’ desire to find “asylum” in Europe, which in every direction is making nonsense of the law. One law dictates that asylum seekers must be welcomed. But another makes it illegal to enter the EU without a visa, while it is made as dangerous as possible to do so. A third then places responsibility for those who do manage to do so on the first EU country they enter, usually Italy, where their application to remain must be “processed”. But the only wish of these countries is to evade the law by moving them on to the countries most actually wish to reach, such as Germany, Sweden or Britain.