What's all this? San Marine has declared war on Britain! The smallest republic in the World (area 38 sq.m., pop. 14,389, as the Encylopedia Britannica gracefully puts it) has to take up arms against the world's greatest empire, doubtless after a great deal of intolerable provocation. It cán be imgained what a stir. the receipt of information caused in the Foreign Office; what a rush for atlases to find out where this place that Sounds like seaside resort but isn't, parks it-Self when at peace. Why should the armed might of this state, of all the states in the world, be lates sant Britain, which, after all, is pretty busy at the moment handling Hitler and Mussolini? The answer is easy. San Marine is in northern Italy, and has Italians on every mile of ity 24-mile frontier. Though its declaration of war may cast a shadow of doubt over the claim, San Marine is independent—and proud of it. It is also proud of being the oldest state in Europe, San Marine began as a monastery in 885 A.D. It became a republic some time in the tenth century, when republics were sprouting in the fertile Italian soil. During the wars which raged in Italy throughout the Middle Ages, San Marine managed to keep fairly free, falling a victim to this nobleman or that occasionally, but always eventually regaining' liberty. There seems to be some difference or-opinion whether San Marine was numbered among "our gallant Allies" during the last war, the United Press stating that it had been in a state of war with Germany since 1915—without the Germans remembering it—while the Encyclopedia Britannica states that it was nominally neutral. Readers can believe which version they like, but it seems probable that the encyclopedia, with its meticulous attention to detail, would not slip up on a matter of such vital importance. Germany, it revealed, made a threatening gesture in the direction of San Marine at one time during the last war, and caused a wireless receiving station owned by the republic to be dismantled. Beyond that incident, San Marine does not seem to have been involved in the hostilities.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.