SOUTHERN THEATRE: San Marino In

As if she were not having enough troubles, Great Britain learned last week that the Republic of San Marino, with its 950 soldiers and 39 dazzlingly uniformed officers, all “in splendid condition,” had declared war against her.

To do so the oldest and smallest republic—called by Abraham Lincoln “one of the most honored States in history”—had to conclude its 25-year war with Germany. Having entered World War I along with Italy, its neighbor and protector, San Marino forgot to show up when peace treaties were signed at Sevres and Versailles. Everyone else forgot about San Marino. Even when the tiny Republic’s new pro-Fascist twin regents outdid their master himself by both appearing on the same City Hall balcony to announce that everything was all changed now, San Marino hadn’t quite caught up with current history; it is still at war with Turkey. No one thought about changing that after the last war either, until a Turkish student in 1936 tried to enter San Marino to study agriculture. He was denied admittance as an enemy alien, which was less trouble than straightening out San Marinese-Turkish relations.

Sprawling over the top of Mt. Titano in northeastern Italy, only 30 miles from Predappio, where Benito Mussolini was born more years ago than he likes to have recalled,* San Marino has 38 square miles of tourist-delighting quaintness and scenery, 14,500 inhabitants who love to give away honorary citizenship to rich Americans. Tradition claims it was founded by a hermit stonecutter named Marinus who gathered about him Christian slaves—the poor and oppressed. Cesare Borgia briefly conquered it in 1503, Cardinal Alberoni overran it for a year in 1739, but always, through centuries of war and political strife, with Italian acquiescence, it maintained its borders, governed itself wisely and well.

Guidobaldo, Duke of Urbino, escaped from Borgia’s treachery with San Marinese help. Garibaldi saw an Austrian Army that was pursuing him halt at the Republic’s frontiers. When the Fascist tide started rising in Italy, so many refugees were washed up on the mountain side that Italy threatened to take over San Marino. Instead, the Fascists tried for years to control its politics. Not until 1932 was there a pro-Fascist majority in the 60-man Grand Council. Not until Federico Gozi (whose family has run San Marino for years) and Salvatore Foschi were elected twin regents last week, and given identical uniforms and equal governing power, did San Marino catch up with World War II. But something else had been forgotten by San Marino. The stonecutter Marinus during his lifetime railed against wars to gain territory, on his deathbed gave his people a creed which has guided them from the Fourth Century until the 20th: “We do not want an inch of others’ lands and we will not give up an inch of our own.”

* 57-