POCKET-EDITION STATES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 17, 20 October 1939, Page 8

POCKET-EDITION STATES

Islands in Europe’s Sea of Trouble

TANDING alone, like islands in a sea S of trouble, are the little countries in the great nations’ backyards. These pocketsize countries, pursuing their leisurely, Lilliputian way, are the museums of the Continent, preserving within their narrow frontiers the relics of past days. Tiny, insignificant, they only leap into the news when something "big" stirs up around them. In Luxembourg The good Luxembourgeois love their country of "cows and castles, grass and flowers, forests and winding streams." Colourful fétes are still held under

the crumbling walls of medieval castles much as they were generations back; joyful young people dance through the streets on fair days, while in the market-place, crackers, candies, balloons, squawkers, and sweet drinks’ charm the youthful’ heart. Travellers’ tales say that the national creed would seem to be "sit tight and wait." In that traditionally conservative land, even the postal clerk snaps, "What do you want a thirty-centime postage stamp for?" But being warm-hearted, as are all his countrymen, within a week he will tear apart a whole sheet of stamps to give you the best printed ones. They make friends slowly; but once a friend, always a friend. Luxembourg, for all that its fields ‘are calm and untroubled and its people happy and industrious, has not always been peaceful. The present state; which forms the eastern, half of the old Duchy, has had

Spanish masters, Austrian, French, German. Then, by the Treaty of London, in 1867, it was proclaimed neutral territory. Dotted throughout the country are cathedrals and churches, for the people of Luxembourg have always been religious. To this day they, seek to ward off sickness by dancing the Procession of Etternach. The dance continues for hours in the streets, until the dancers are filled with exhaustion and beatitude, and .sickness is (presumably) vanquished. To-day this country of 1,000 square miles and 297,000 people, lies at the cross-roads of Belgium, France and Germany. An island indeed amid’ the wild waves of war!

Country in a Glance There are very few countries the traveller can see in a glance-perhaps, with the exception of Monaco, only one, and that one is Liechtenstein. Visitors to Davos or St. Moritz in Switzerland can take in, as they stand on the Swiss slopes, the whole 65 square miles of the rugged mountainous little land with its pleasant valleys and thick woods. As near to ideal as possible is the life of the 11,000 Liechtensteiners. Since last year Franz Joseph II. has been their ruler. Enjoying universal suffrage, paying almost no taxes, the people have done no military service since an army of eighty men reported for duty too late to take part in the AustroPrussian War! So, for the present, life goes on in its centuried tranquillity in this midget country which the Great War in 1914 did not touch. Idyllic Andorra Waving its azure, yellow, and red over a tiny fastness of 175 square miles in the Pyrenees is the flag of Andorra. Andorra is hardly real-it might

have been taken out of a Lehar comic opera. Hollywood film magnates would scorn to use such a meagre number of extras as 700, yet that is the number of people in the capital of the miniature republic. The total population is only 5,500, who have over them a Council of Twenty-four-all of them, one likes to think, benign old gentlemen like Frank Morgan, with lovely daughters. To keep them in the paths of law there is a judge, and to keep them in the paths of God, two Frenchappointed lay vicars and a Spanish bishop. The people were in the public eye when the civil war in Spain was raging. But now, with Spain quiet and too exhausted for the major struggle in Europe, Andorra may go back into its six-hundred-year-old sleep, Fabled Monte Carlo

There is no place where it is particularly easy to make-a lot of money; but there is one place where it is fantastically simple to lose it-fabled Monte Carlo. Monaco, the principality, is 3 miles long and 1144 miles broad. Nothing ever grows in it because there is no available earth, everything being built on. In the white Mediterranean sunlight, the town looks like a sugar decoration on an ambitious confectioner’s tour de force. It is not likely that any European upheaval will destroy it, because every race likes to have somewhere to waste money pleasantly. Little San Marino In the hills near Rimini in Italy lies San Marino, a republic founded by a pious Dalmatian in the 4th century. Being small and easily manageable, San Marino is a prosperous little country. From its . 38 square miles come wine, cereals, cheese, oil, and cattle. The capital, with 2,000 people, has a church, a Government palace, and a theatre. To be like her big neighbours, San Marino has 1,000 soldiers, and her blue and white’ flag, emblazoned with the Republic’s coat-of-arms, waves proudly over her ‘independence.