Word: marino
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With its crenelated walls and towers, San Marino perches on a mountaintop in northern Italy like some displaced relic of the Middle Ages. The world's oldest and smallest (23 square miles) republic, it was reputedly founded around A.D. 300 by Saint Marinus of Dalmatia as a refuge for persecuted Christians, has survived as a curious, isolated island in time amidst Italy's sweeping political tides. But last week the harsh forces of the 20th century clashed noisily in its cobbled streets...
...good people of San Marino made the mistake of electing a Communist and left-wing Socialist majority to their local Parliament, the Grand Council. Heady with power, the nation's new rulers took over with an impressive program of local improvements, including nationalization of the nation's only two factories, which both manufacture ceramic souvenirs for the tourist trade. But the new deal never quite came off. One by one the Red faithful left the fold. Three weeks ago San Marino's Demo-Christian minority leader suddenly woke up to the fact that his party now commanded...
...Christian Democrat Federico Biggi, a lawyer and Latin professor in his spare time, called his followers together over a secret dinner of lasagna. roast chicken and Chianti in a small restaurant in the Italian seaside town of Rimini. Dinner over, Biggi and his lieutenants slipped furtively back into San Marino, called their followers together and passed out a formidable armory of ancient muskets, hunting rifles and outmoded carbines. Then they holed up in an abandoned iron foundry only 50 yards from the Italian border, and on a rickety table lighted by a candle stuck in a bottle, wrote...
...Spirits. As soon as the Communists heard the news, they ringed the Public Palace on the hilltop with a guard of local comrades armed with weapons cached away since war's end. While Italy's press screamed of "bloody civil war" in the tiny contained nation, San Marino's own partisans were subdued by a drizzling rain. At one point the Reds on the hill organized a sortie against their adversaries, but what with the mud and all, gave up after firing a single wild shot. The Italian government helpfully recognized the anti-Communist government, then sent...
...punctuated with illustrations. Herald Tribune editorials subpoenaed the ghost of Joe McCarthy for a satiric soliloquy, thrice peppered Jimmy ("Public Enemy No. 1") Hoffa, cudgeled Yugoslavia's Tito and the New York City board of education, ranged more or less merrily from the World Series to San Marino to Jayne Mansfield's bedipitus. Other dewatermelonization steps: ¶ reprint of a radio essay by CBS Commentator Eric Sevareid reflecting on the recent sad decline of quality in the Herald Tribune, and his hopes for a return to its "old heritage." ¶ A well-pruned letters column in a freshened...