In a recent dispatch from Rome Premier Mussolini announced that when the new "school of politics" opens on October 29, young Fascists who labor for a living will have the same opportunity as other young men to become party and government leaders. But we may well ask, not ironically of course, just what opportunity does exist for men to become leaders of that great commonwealth?

Of course no one would be considered who was not a member of the Fascist party and who did not regard the great Mussolini as his leader at all times. We hear a great deal in this age of enlightened democracy of equality of opportunity, but there is probably no democratic nation in the world which can really say such a thing exists. In Russia to become a leader in the governmental administration one must be an ardent Communist; in Germany one must be a National Socialist who believes that the Hitler administration has formulated a philosophy and plan that will be tenacled to Germany for at least a thousand years to come, and in the United States one must know how to sit on a picket fence without damaging one's anatomy. In Italy, Germany, and Russia where one party has completely taken over the reins of government, freedom of thought has become a myth and an unpatriotic form of amusement. Even in this great land of the free and the brave to criticize the present administration is regarded as an act of tyranny and the interloper a tory. It is inevitable that where regimentation of economic and political activities occurs, there also must be found regimentation of thinking in all branches of human activity.

If the young toilers of the Fascists state aspire to leadership they must be content to think as their obdurate leader does and to allow him to do their thinking for them. Any "school of politics" operating under such conditions must necessarily be a school for the dissemination of propaganda and not one which encourages free thinking. Equality of opportunity, as respects the attaining of leadership in governmental activities, will only come as the rule of the masses is supplanted by the rule of reason. And unfortunately for the world only idealistic romanticists indulge in envisaging any such ideal state of affairs.