TOPICS OF THE TIMES

Southland Times, Issue 18818, 11 May 1920, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE TIMES

Admirers of that adventurous philosopher, Mr Pickwick, who would still see what remains of the Golden Cross Hotel, where he is described as having encountered the hackney coachman and been rescued from trouble by Mr Jingle, will have to make their pilgrimages to London before the new plan for a new traffic route between Piccadilly, Regent Street, and the Strand removes a number of historic landmarks. A new outlet, says the London correspondent of the New York Times, is needed across the Thames, a new street necessary, and if the plan proposed by John Murray, F.R.1.8.A., F. 5.1., as well as surveyor to the Crown Estates in London, is carried out, much that now stands as a picturesque reminder of the eighteenth century city will vanish. Among the houses that will be torn down is the one in which Benjamin Franklin lived in 1771. Villiers and Buckingham streets will be obliterated, both named for the dukes of Buckingham, and with this change will disappear the birthplace of Lord Bacon and the spot where Peter the Great once lodged, as well as that where Samuel Pepya had his dwelling. John, Robert, James, and William streets, built and named by the brothers Adam on vast arches that raised them to the level of the Strand a century and a half ago, will disappear, and so will the York Stairs, or Water Gate, designed by Inigo Jones, at the bottom of Buckingham Street. The “Imperial Way,” as the new thoroughfare is called, is perhaps only a preliminary proposal, for it has not been officially approved. Even if not carried out, it foreshadows an eventual change in the locality of Charing Cross that will remove eighteenth century reminders, to provide necessary facilities for the traffic of the twentieth century.

Every now and then one hears of yet another “smallest republic in the world.” The latest candidate for that title is announced by a writer in -the Wide World, who has been visiting San Marino, the small and ancient republic that has perched for centuries, out of sight and out of memory, inaccessible and not large or rich enough to attract the dangerous interest of a “conqueror,” on the heights of Mt. Titanus in Italy. The little republic is said to bo not larger than 38 square miles, and its population is only about 11,000. Before the war a good may tourists went to San Marino, and now that the war is over a good many tourists are expected; but the only part played by the littie republic during the war, despite the sip-actsicuiar statement at one time that this Lilliputian government had “declared war” against the Central Powers, was the individual departure and enlistment in the Italian Army of many of its younger citizens. Technically San Marsno maintained a dignified neutrality. San Marino is said to date from the fourth century', and it is probably true enough that it would ho difficult to find any nation nowadays in which so many customs centuries and centuries old are still practised in a matter-of-course way by the people. The government, which was originally constituted by the head of a monastery', changed about 900 years ago to a General Council, at which the heads of families have the right to assemble twice a year to discuss matters, and in the little mountain community litis system seems still to work well for the contentment of all the citizens. Italy completely surrounds the republic, and the relations between Italy and San Marino have always been friendly. To-day Italian money' is the currency of the republic, the Italian Government manages the international telegraph and postal system, bm there is no apprehension in San Marino that Italy ia ever likely to disturb its autonomy.