Not many people, I imagine (and hope), will question the
wisdom of Sir Samuel Hoare's refusal to prohibit the holding in this country of a rather portentously named International Congress of the World Union of Freethinkers ; the sur- prising thing is that seventy Members of Parliament should have been found to urge him to that form of intolerance. Their alarm has a singular basis. They think the event is likely to cause a serious breach of the peace. Through whose agency ? Are the Christians for whom the seventy speak expected to demonstrate their Christianity by attacking the Freethinkers ? Who these Freethinkers are I have no knowledge ; they have certainly not made much impression on the world so far and there is small reason to believe they will. But there are pretty certainly a good many thousand people in this country who share their views—and have not so far been the occasion of a breach of the peace. No one who cares for Christianity will readily countenance the implication that its hold on England is so precarious that an obscure congress of Freethinkers can imperil it. There were some wise words spoken once about letting wheat and tares grow together till the harvest. In any case Freethinkers are to be preferred to non-thinkers—of whom we have all too many. * *
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