This is an excerpt of a Providence (R.I.) Journal editorial published Wednesday.

AFTER their country was reunited in 1990, the Germans voted to move their capital from Bonn, a sleepy university town in the Rhineland, back to Berlin, the nation's capital between Germany's first unification, in 1871, and the end of World War II.

Now, as the old Reichstag building, newly burnished and refurbished by the British architect Sir Norman Foster, is reopened, the government moves to Berlin, the horrors of communist rule recede and the links between the new and old Germany are connected, the growth of the federal republic enters a new, dynamic phase. It will be interesting to watch the evolution of the Berlin republic.