San Marino
By CONSTANTINE FITZGIBBON duced by the government tourist bureau, " do not fail to visit the quite new kursaal." I did not fail. It is a large, white building, hospital-modern in style and some six years old, perched on one of the highest peaks of Mount Titan and thus commanding a truly astonishing panorama over the Sammarinese lowlands and the Italian plain that leads to the sea at Rimini, twenty miles or so away. The inside is more handsome than the out, the walls of fine marble, the chandeliers of delicate design, the windows huge and well-pro- portioned. It must be the most lavish, as it is the most modern, of casinos. And it is empty, deserted, a shell. The roulette and baccarat tables are stacked side by side in one great hall; through the others a solitary caretaker leads his very occasional guest. No plays are enacted in the gem of a theatre downstairs.
For this casino, which flourished for one year only, was a menace to Italy's casinos down below. The Italians had no legal right to protest, so they simply put their foot down, and the little country of San Marino is entirely ringed by Italy. They began by withholding the subsidy which, by international agreement, they were due to pay San Marino in lieu of customs dues. However, in its first six months the casino produced in revenue more than three times the annual value of that subsidy. The Italians, watching a catastrophic drop in the receipts of the Venice casino, adopted sterner methods. Modelling them- selves, it seems, on the Russians at Berlin, they threw a customs cordon around the republic, and any would-be gambler had to submit to the most gruelling of examinations.' The air would be released from his tyres, his petrol tank drained in an alleged search for contraband. After several hours of this sort of treatment, few gamblers would persist in their desire to try their luck. The casino was, quasi-legally, throttled. Nor was this all. For eighteen months the Italians, by these methods. put a total stop to San Marino's considerable tourist trade. For eighteen months no Sammarinese might leave his little republic, no student might go to the university, no business- man might visit his colleagues in Italy. San Marino was blockaded, nobody suggested an airlift, and at last, in April of 1953, the government gave in. An agreement was signed with Italy. and among the other concessions which the little country has made to its big neighbour are promises never to re-open the casin6 and never to build a radio or television station. Machtpolitik, allowed to pass without comment by Italy's present-day allies.
But then the recent behaviour of the British Government towards the defenceless little country has hardly been more chivalrous. The story, briefly, is as follows. On June 26th, 1944, bombers of the Royal Air Force bombed the capital of this neutral country. The Sammarinesi maintain, with con- siderable documentary evidence, that the Germans had hitherto respected their neutrality, and conversation with Sammarinesi of all political views supports this contention. The British, however, allege that this was not so, though they have so far quite failed to produce any proof to the contrary. As a second line of defence, the British say that the RAF raid was an Allied operation. The Americans meanwhile disclaim all responsibility, on the grounds that there were no American troops in the area. In any event, sixty-three persons, sfLrncl of whom were political refugees from Fascist Italy, were killed in the raid and over fifty wounded. This raid gave the Germans a legal excuse to occupy Safi Marino, which in consequence had to be fought over, with all the further loss of life and damage to property that that entailed. But when the San Marino government asked Great Britain for what is surely justifiable compensation—some Pali a million pounds, the greater part of which could at that no! have been extracted from the Germans—they were first insulted as liars, and finally offered an ex gratia payment of £26.UwA, in full settlement. This they have naturally refused; it woe' barely cover the value of the objects destroyed in the mascara at the time of the raid. And now, a decade later, negotir tions drag fitfully on. Of course there is something behind it all, but what? reference to the tardiness and almost pathological meanness et, the British Treasury in settling the war claims of even British subjects does not deeply impress the Sammarinesi, for t't British paid the Swiss quickly enough. No; they see another motive for the Italian attitude, and they tend to assume tit the British are backing their allies in the North Atlantic Troy. Organisation. The Sammarinesi are individualists, and shit.; the war they have repeatedly shown their refusal to allow Ws: Italians to swallow them by electing a government which technically a Communist-Socialist coalition. The fact that, during their eight years in power, these diabolical persons have passed no single law even moderately left-wing in nature, that there has been not one act of political oppression, that the head of the Demo-Christian opposition carries out his law, practice and his political activities unmolested while a formed fascist Captain-Regent can and does own a large hotel, all', that the present communist Captain-Regent has to attend Mass in the Basilica in order to assume or re-assume office--all this, the Sammarinesi say, is forgotten. They are convinced that Italy, with the backing of Britain and America, wishes to force their government into bankruptcy and out of existenca But they are a stubborn lot. They remember with pride hes4 their tiny country defied the Austrian Emperor a century agq' when that monarch threatened war unless the refugee Garin baldi were surrendered. They also feel that the Italian Pe',‘ ticians are sorely deficient in humour, and the British charity. The Sammarinesi have an abundance of both qualities. hi their steep and narrow streets they sell their bright and endles! series of postage stamps, their delicious muscato and t? excellent traditional San Marino cake which so perfectly complements that slightly sparkling wine when one is sate outside a café on a sunny afternoon with the vast spread °I the plain stretching away beneath one's feet to the distap., Adriatic. As an amateur of gastronomic history I made I's my business to find out about this wafery pastry which .0 always served in the traditional wooden box bearing on Id lid the traditional three-castle outline of Monte Titano. it date from the Renaissance, when the Sammarinesi were 5, busy defending their freedom against Caesar Borgia? Or fr°it a later date, when they were resisting Cardinal Alberoni? perhaps from an even earlier period? Endless dispute, 11,11; solved, resulted. But so much at least was revealed : t'ot traditional cake was invented not earlier than 1942 and 0,,o, later than 1947. The inventor was, at the moment, in Morlaic,, where he was busy inventing a traditional Monegasque e%s
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