| Show tt l ar I 1 aia r ap I 1 1 DIVO fiOriS POPULAR SEVERING MARRIAGE TIE NO LONGER SHOCKS marion crawford the novelist Kov eliat think that the growth of So clallam ig bej bei BI bj is for much mach of the spread of es Dl divorces Torce I 1 WENTY or T thirty years ago dk divorces I 1 were so raft aar I 1 as to be regarded in the light of very 4 uncommon exceptions tao to the general rule the divorce law itself la Is not yet forty years old in england nor twenty years 01 old ca in france in italy there is no civil divorce whatever at the present day and the catholic church only grants what are not properly divorces but annalla eions of marriage in very rare cases and with the greatest reluctance even in america every one can cam remember how haw divorce was spoken of and thought of until very recently within a few years it was deemed to be something very like a disgrace and certainly a profoundly cynical and immoral proceeding today to day we can most of us count in our acquaintance half a dozen persons who have haie been divorced and been married again whatever we may think of it in our hearts or whatever our religious convictions may be on the subject it has become so common that when we hear of a flagrant case of cruelty or unfaithfulness by which a man or woman suffers the question at once rises to our lips why does she not divorce her husband or why does he not divorce his wife we have grown used to the idea and it if it does doe not please us it certainly does not shock hock us it shocked our fathers but we are perfectly indifferent of course there are many perhaps a majority who though not roman catholics would in their own lives put up with almost anything rather than go to the divorce court for peace some actually suffer much and ask for no redress but there are very many who have not suffered anything at all excepting the favorite incompatibility incompatibility of temper and who have taken advantage of the loose laws in certain states to try a second matrimonial experiment in what calls itself society there seems still to be a prejudice against a third marriage for divorced persons pr sons but at the present rate of advance in civilization this cannot last long and the old significance of the word marriage will be quite lost before our youngest grandchildren are dead in other words by the end of the next century at the furthest there are various forms of honorable political dreaming and of dishonorable political mischief making nowadays which we are accustomed to call collectively socialism most of these rely tor for hope of popular success upon their avowed intention of dividing property and preventing its subsequent accumulation mu lation marriage is an incentive of such accumulation because it perpetuates families and therefore keeps property together by inheritance therefore all forms of socialism are at present in favor of divorce as a means of ultimately destroying marriage altogether A proverb says that whosoever desires the end desires also the means there is more truth in the saying than morality in the point of view it expresses but there are those who desire neither the means nor the end to bach they lead and a struggle is comins coming the like of which hadnot has not been seen since the beginning of the world and of which we who are now alive shall not see the termination from A rose of yesterday by marion craw cra w baft |
