During the following hours and days it was hard to place a phone call to New York. All circuits were overloaded as uncounted people wanted reassurance that relatives and friends had weathered the ordeal--or callers just felt the need to say, "We are with you." Europe's most powerful emotional response to events in the United States since the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 showed the innumerable public and private bonds that tie it to America, and especially to New York.

A plaque on the Romanesque-Gothic cathedral of Piacenza near Milan records that the Famiglia Piacentina of New York, a hometown association, donated replacement of a gilt angel sculpture that a World War II bombing raid had knocked off the bell tower. Basques, Greeks, Estonians and scores of other ethnic communities too have their own social or parish organizations, clubs and restaurants in Big Apple. You hail a taxi at Penn Station and the woman cabbie informs you during the ride that she recently immigrated from Romania. Spaniards who remember the Civil War of 1936-39 still live on West 14th Street in Manhattan, not far from Ground Zero. And among the Holocaust survivors in New York quite grim memories of the old country are curiously mixed with something like nostalgia for their pre-Nazi days there.

Then there are the multitudes of Europeans who are or have recently been in New York as tourists for New Year's Eve in Times Square or to visit the museums and pick up bargains in the stores, or for longer sojourns as students or for business. On the other hand, Oxford and Paris and Salamanca and Florence are full of young Americans who spend an academic year there; and tens of thousands of retirees or other expatriates from the United States have made their home in some European country.

Almost all of these people, their families, friends and hosts wanted to talk to one another. And thus clogged the trans-Atlantic phone networks.

There were also high-priority communications. One of the first was from Tony Blair to the White House. The Prime Minister told President Bush first, and the American people in person at an address to Congress later, that Britain was standing shoulder to shoulder with the United States. The impression throughout Continental Europe was deep, and it wasn't devoid of some muted misgivings: Which side are the Brits really on? The question had often been asked on the Continent before--Are the British convinced Europeans or do they, with their "special relationship," represent a Yank outpost on the east side of the ocean? The leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Spain and other European nations quickly followed Blair's lead, assuring the United States President in person of their governments' full support in the war on terrorism. The basic doctrine of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was invoked: An armed attack on one of its members will be considered an attack against all. NATO countries pledged military help; Britain had lent it immediately and substantially.

What made even more of a splash in Europe than Britain's prompt reaction to the terrorist offensive was the early phone call to President Bush from the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, offering collaboration. European commentators pointed out that Putin was thinking in the first place of Islamist extremists in the Caucasus and in the Central Asian republics that once belonged to the Soviet Union. Yet those analysts also sensed a significant shift in big-power relations. Russia to them seemed cozying up to NATO, whose European members had allied themselves with the United States in 1949 because they felt threatened by Moscow.

President Putin's gestures after Sept. 11 and his family visit with the Bushes at their Texas ranch in November baffled old-line Communists throughout Europe not a little. Other leftists who traditionally have regarded the Russians as an indispensable counterweight to the overbearing Americans were, and are, equally perplexed.

Already in the first few days after the Twin Towers crumbled some left leaning newspapers and magazines in France and other European countries had cautiously but unmistakably gloated. "The Giant has been Wounded by His Own Weapons" was a typical headline. In snide commentaries the United States was reminded of the Iraqi children whose death the American-inspired embargo had allegedly caused, and of sundry other misdeeds the United States was said to have perpetrated in the third world. What happened in New York and Washington serves them right, was not the so subtly expressed message.

When the first bombs rained on Afghanistan, anti-American coalitions in various European cities staged protest marches, meetings and sit-ins. "Neither for bin Laden nor for Bush" was (and still is) the alliterative slogan of the demonstrators. To end terrorism, the protestors recommended negotiations and dialogue. How to engage religiously motivated fanatics in constructive talks has never been explained by the pro-Taliban opinion makers.

European opposition to the American anti-terrorism strategies has the support of some lawmakers in various nations and a popular following of variable breadth. This camp is composed of many diverse factions: There are Leninist and Stalinist diehards, sneering intellectuals who regard the Americans as rich but crude barbarians, anti-war Greens, anti-Semites and ultra-rightists, and religiously motivated pacifists. The last group includes quite a few left-wing Roman Catholics, some clergy among them. In a village church in Tuscany at Christmastime worshippers spotted among the figures of shepherds the likeness of Osama bin Laden in the traditional Nativity display. The mutterings of the congregation members who didn't want to see the Prince of Terror among the humble folk adoring the Infant Jesus in His crib caused the offending crèche to be removed.

The Vatican, which keeps exerting a lot of influence not only in countries like Italy, Poland and Ireland but also in France and Germany, was itself caught in a bind. Pope John Paul II has for some time been attempting to promote something like amicable relations with Islam. He recently paid unprecedented visits to al-Azhar University in Cairo, the foremost Muslim center of learning, and to the Mosque of the Omayyads in Damascus; he has proposed that the followers of Christ and of the Prophet Muhammad should pardon each other for past persecutions and atrocities. The present pontiff has also expressed sympathy for the Palestinian cause and has repeatedly received Yasir Arafat in formal audiences.

Catholic pacifists in Europe therefore expected the pope to speak out, condemning the American and British bombing raids on Afghanistan. However, prudence prevailed in the Vatican after the Roman Catholic hierarchy of the United States overwhelmingly endorsed President Bush and his war on terrorism. Pope John Paul II, whose public utterances are frequent, covering many subjects and issues, has been markedly restrained in discussing what has been happening in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, several European nations have stepped up their own anti terrorism drives. Following the kamikaze attacks in New York and Washington it was found that much of the preparations had been done in places like Hamburg, London, Madrid and Milan. Islamist extremists evidently had infiltrated also the scruffy suburbs of French cities that are populated by immigrants from North Africa as well as some Muslim mosques and community centers in England and on the Continent. The European nations, like Germany, that have imported millions of "guest workers" from Islamic countries during the last several decades are now investigating terrorist conspiracies; they have discovered that al Qaeda cells managed to recruit volunteers for violence and even for suicide missions, and to send them to training camps in Afghanistan. Clandestine Islamist networks also appear to have raised plenty of funds, channeling them to bin Laden's organization through the awala system, which works through family and tribal connections and leaves no written records.

Sensitive spots throughout Europe--government buildings, airports, railroad terminals, tunnels and bridges, embassies, power plants and other installations--are now guarded around the clock. The authorities suspect that bin Laden's web of terrorism, still largely intact, may be preparing a major attack somewhere in Britain or on the Continent. Such a criminal strike may be planned for more than one plane at the same time, as it was in the synchronized New York-Washington action. Sept. 11 also has induced European law enforcement and intelligence agencies to collaborate more closely with one another and with their American counterparts than they did before. Information regarding terrorism suspects is now exchanged every day. One of the findings in ongoing investigations is that the activists of al Qaeda and similar networks change their ostensible identities and names frequently and apparently have little difficulty in getting false passports, money, shelter and explosives.

All the time European leaders are watching with dismay the somber developments in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and are nervously hoping that the United States will not take on Iraq after--or even before--bin Laden is dealt with. Sept. 11 has deepened Europe's economic troubles and increased the number of jobless. What may be the timid beginning of recovery might be snuffed out by another major war just as the Continent has achieved an important step toward unification by the adoption, as of January 1, 2002, of the new 12-nation currency, the euro