Bolshevism In Yellow Gloves

SAN MARINO

The devil was back in San Marino.

Sixteen hundred and forty-eight years ago, the Dalmatian stonecutter Marinus arrived on the rocky slopes of Mount Titano, in central Italy, drove out the fat brown bears who inhabited the mountain, and founded the republic now known as San Marino. To lead a counterattack against Marinus, the story goes, the ursine exiles selected a huge black bear, who was actually Satan in disguise. Marinus lured the devil bear to the edge of a precipice and thrust a wooden cross in his face. The evil one went up in sulphurous smoke.

Last week the Catholic bishops of the Italian dioceses of Rimini and Montefalco, who supervise the spiritual welfare of the world's oldest and smallest republic (38 sq. mi.; pop. 12,000), in a pastoral letter called on St. Marinus to combat Beelzebub's latest manifestation--a Communist-sponsored gambling casino.

Blue Neon Sign. The Communist-Socialist coalition, which has ruled San Marino since 1945, has kept the voters happy and free of worry about Satan by devoting one-third of its budget to WPA-style public works. This year, with its credit exhausted and the budget at a record 530 million lire ($923,500), the government desperately needed money to meet a new 200 million lire deficit.

At first, the republic's Communist boss, lean, saturnine ex-Partisan Gildo Gasperoni, publicly decried the suggestion that San Marino become another Monte Carlo to lure money from free-spending capitalists. "This means the end of a tradition," he said with hands raised before his eyes. But in the end, Gasperoni and his Communists pushed the plan through.

A combine of Genoese financiers forked over 100 million lire down-payment for a nine-year gambling concession, agreed to build a casino and put up a 100-room hotel.

Last week, a brilliant blue neon sign and the suspenseful whirr of roulette wheels heralded the opening of San Marino's casino, temporarily quartered in the Kursaal, the republic's one concert hall. There was a quiet champagne party for 300 local officials and well-heeled visitors. Three dozen croupiers (imported from Italy) smoothly took charge of the casino's five roulette and two baccarat tables.

To some San Marinese, the promise of new prosperity was all that counted. Among antiCommunists, the casino was a sharp political issue. They were convinced that behind the casino's gaming tables stood a menace to San Marino's independence, a mysterious Rumanian known locally as Maximo Maxim.

Long-Distance Calls. Maxim, a squat, balding little man, is listed in the official registry of landlocked San Marino as head of a shipping firm. He moved in a year and a half ago, lives quietly with his mistress in a rented stone bungalow. He wears yellow velvet gloves, talks more on the long-distance telephone than anyone else in the republic. From the Convent of St. Francis, Maxim has been seen slipping into the Communist casino's back door. A black-bearded monk summed up the general suspicion. "Here in San Marino," he said, "there exists Bolshevism in yellow velvet gloves, but still Bolshevism. It is directed by Maximo Maxim."

San Marinese, who have a well-developed imagination, suspect Maxim of being a Cominform agent. Said one ominously: "Around the roulette tables there will be created centers of intrigue and espionage." But on most nights during the first week's play scarcely 100 gamblers made the trek up the mountain. Nearly all were Italians from modest Adriatic beach resorts, with little money and no talent for intrigue.

Anti-Communists hoped that the casino would fold, and with it the republic's leftist regime. Gildo Gasperoni had been heard to say: "If the casino succeeds we will be all right. If it doesn't, then we pack our bags and go." If Gasperoni went, thought San Marinese, Maxim might also go. He might even go in a cloud of sulphur smoke.

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