“Germany! Germany!”

IN THE end, it was not the hell that they came from that mattered. It was the hope their destination inspired. “Germany! Germany!” the refugees chanted on the crowded platform of a Budapest train station, and Germany heard them. Many in the country, like many around the world, had been moved to a new level of compassion for Syria’s refugees by pictures of Alan Kurdi, a little boy washed up dead on a Turkish shore. Many more had felt shame as neo-Nazis set fire to some asylum homes. But what mattered most were the goose bumps the nation got as they saw that throng chanting.