Mussolini and the Vatican are fast coming to loggerheads because the Fascist regime is planning to curtail religious education. At the same time the New York State Government has met and disposed of a problem of a rather strikingly opposite nature.

The President of the Society of Free Thinkers recently brought suit against the New York Board of Education because one hour from every public school week has been left open for religious education of any sort the parents of pupils may choose. This parochial instruction, furthermore, is optional. It seems to us that it is rather an anomalous sort of free thinking which attempts to curtail parents' right of choice in the matter of their offspring's religious education. Free and anti-religious are not generally considered synonymous.

There is something vastly amusing in the reflection that the Free Thinkers by their recent action put themselves on the same side of the fence as the Tennessee fundamentalists. Their president and Dr. John Roach Straton are not so much on opposite poles as their labels imply. Neither is content to live and let live. Both lake the same position in attempting to exploit justice to carry out their convictions.

The Free Thinkers failed to prove the validity of their case in court. Their efforts, however, give evidence that no matter how far men may get from the literal interpretation of Genesis, they must go much farther before they can cast off the bugaboos of bigotry and intolerance. An orthodox Free Thinker sounds like a paradox, but apparently he is a fact.