Suddenly all eyes are on Europe. The New York Times is out with an editorial today warning of deflation on the continent. The Sulzberger family wants the value of European money to fall rather than rise; weirdly, it wishes the same for American money. The Wall Street Journal is out with a much savvier piece, by the editor of Die Zeit, Josef Joffe. He focuses on the drama over whether the European Central Bank really has the power it has claimed — but hasn’t yet used — to buy up government bonds on the open market through a maneuver called “Outright Monetary Transactions.” The matter is now before the European Court of Justice. The Financial Times has been on the edge of a nervous breakdown over this for weeks.

Here at the Sun, we’re rather enjoying the spectacle. It’s another chapter in the epic experiment with fiat money. We’re looking forward to seeing what the red-robed judges at Luxembourg decide in respect of whether the European Central Bank should be able to buy government debt this way. Wouldn’t it be something if the Europeans struck a note of greater probity than what is permitted here in America? Supposedly, our central bank is prohibited from buying bonds from the United States Treasury. Yet its vast campaign of quantitative easing accomplished what Mario Draghi is claiming the authority to do. The Federal Reserve now holds more than $2 trillion of its own government’s debt. No wonder Congress is in a rush to borrow yet more.

Is that the way the Europeans want to go? Mr. Joffe, whom the Sun switchboard reached by radio in the Alps, is confident the European court will give Mr. Draghi the authority he seeks. All the more we find ourselves reflecting on the fact that there was a time when Europe was the leader in the idea of honest money. There were the Austrian Economists. There were others in both Britain and France. There were political leaders with the vision to see the consequences for small and medium-sized countries of a profligate country holding the sole reserve power. DeGaulle, whom we wrote about the other day in our editorial “Yellen and DeGaulle,” was the most blunt. He had Jacques Rueff, an economist who stood for both European integration and honest money. He also served, between 1952 and 1962, on the European Court of Justice. It — we all — could certainly use him now.