During the trial of Mossadegh over in Iran the prosecutor [Hossein Azemoudeh] charged that the former premier became Christian half a century ago when he was a student in Switzerland. He continued that Mossadegh’s religious apostasy was what impelled him to order his personal guard to fire on loyal Moslems, which he never would have done had he in fact been a Moslem.

That seemed to make a clear-cut religious issue. Had Mossadegh trifled with Christianity and forsaken the faith of his fathers? If so, necessarily, he must be guilty of whatever he may be charged with.

Mossadegh, who screams and sobs and tantrums upon the slightest pretext or with no pretext at all, protested this line of attack and tried to storm out of the courtroom. He shouted, “This man has no right to speak about my religion and in saying that I am an infidel, he is inciting some religious zealot to assassinate me.”

Unfortunately, Mossadegh has said something bearing the marks of truth. He lives in very backward country. The people are taught religious fanaticism. In that condition of mind they are seldom fit for considerate appreciation of the ordinary affairs of life or of judgment upon their fellow men.

But the protest comes from Mossadegh with ill grace. In a land of flaming partisanship, of bigotry and utter intolerance, he did his utmost when in power to add to the flames.

Yet this little instance is a revealing fact concerning the generations of education that must lie ahead in Asia if men are first to be put in a frame of mind to deal fairly with their fellows. And the great immediate trouble is that the education cannot be begun. The hundreds of millions in Asia who live in poverty exist in an even worse poverty of the mind.