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Show Kathleen Norris Says: Moratorium on Divorce Bell Syndlcat. WNU Features. "Poor Roy I He wntt tympathy, petting and under Handing. II hat had a pretty tough timt." By KATHLEEN NORRIS ALL the time he is away, A and for six months ufter he gets home, it ought to be made illegal for a soldier's sol-dier's wife to ask for a divorce. If we had had a law like that for the last four years, hundreds of American homes would have been saved. And as the saving of the American home is as important as the saving of America, this would have been a wise law. Soldiers are subject to hundreds of laws, some good, some petty; they must obey them all or suffer humiliating and painful penalties. A man doesn't ask to get Into the service, he Is drafted; it may mean the loss of an arm or leg, or of his eyes, but he has no choice. It may mean that he comes back from years of service o discover that the sweet and gentle woanan of whose love he has been dreaming dream-ing has taken on snother lover, that she wants a ilvorce, that the babies whose little crumpled snap-shots he has been treasuring through many an hour of danger and loneliness, are to be his babies no longer; he has lost home, wife, children at one blow. But he has lost much more than that. His morale receives a deadly dead-ly stroke. He Is tired, disillusioned, perhaps embittered, perhaps sickened sick-ened and saddened by the long bout with death, by the sight ot crushed bodies and torn limbs. Of course he doesn't come home the sunny, unanalytlcal, easy-going young fellow who went away. Of course he needs great doses of affection af-fection and silence and patience, if he Is to be cured. Decision In Two Days. He d"esn't get them. "Roy had only been home two days," writes a Seattle wife, "when we knew It was no go!" Two days! After 31 months In the Inferno of the South Pacific, after risking his life over and over and over. Roy comes home to his drenm woman, and finds she Isn't a dream at all, but a quite human, faulty, aggrieved young thing who believes that she has hnd Just as hard a time as he has. His children are grown I out of recognition; finances are In I an unstable condition; Anna knows he ought to go back and finish his i law course, but good gracious, she j can't live on a government allow- nnce all that time and what en ! earth are the Bnkers to do? I Poor Roy! He wants sympathy, l pelting and understanding, he wants the appreciative atlentlon of all his old friends he has had a pretty . tough time. Instead, no one takes any particular notlre of him, and Anna poses a new problem every other day. "Roy hnd only been home two d.iys when we derided It was no go," Anna writes. "All our friends agreed that he was simply Impossible." Impos-sible." In 48 hours she hnd time to discuss dis-cuss him with all their friends, apparently. ap-parently. Roy knew he was unpopular, unpopu-lar, and that didn't help. Roy Married Again. But there's another half to this story. All this was a year sgo. Anna j I " had no (Kuft." , , , PATIENCE AND AFFECTION Naturally it is difficult for a returned veteran to tlip right back into familiar civilian life again. He has had all torts of hardships and painful experi-ences. experi-ences. His nerves are raw from danger and discipline, or perhaps a siege in the hospital. hos-pital. When he comes back, expecting his wife to be ready to soothe him and make up for all the misery, he is frequently fre-quently disappointed. She probably has had a hard time of it, trying to manage man-age on a small allotment, or working part time. Housing shortages, food rationing and other homefront problems had worn her down. There may be children to care for after a tiring day at work. No wonder she is not quite as sweet and young as he anticipated. antici-pated. All too often these disillusioning disil-lusioning homecomings end in divorce. Quick tempers and frayed nerves bring on quarrels quar-rels of various sorts. The only remedy seems to be in separation. separa-tion. Hasty action quite often causes lifelong heartbreaks, where a little patience and affection af-fection would soon solve the problem, says Miss Norris. got her divorce and the care of two small girls. Roy married a woman who has quite a little property out In the country and Is having a good time managing It Miraculously, he finds himself loved and useful; Anna Is out in the cold. "I've always loved Roy," her letter let-ter finishes, "nnd Is It fair that I should be left to raise the children, with no help from him because he has no money while he has a glorious time running three ranches?" Thousands of wives have demanded de-manded divorces from servicemen during these years. And almost equal thousands have wished they were back with the original mate. A few months of patience, a genuine genu-ine desire to understand what a man Is feeling, a careful preparing of the children's minds, and before you know It, the strangeness of the readjustment re-adjustment wears awny, and the man nnd woman And that they still want to be companions In the adventure ad-venture cf life. If you are one nf those wives who met your man with good news, with a hopeful plan, with a heroic facing fac-ing nf the unavoidable changes and difficulties, then you hsve done your J b for America as well as he did his. If you are not, you may be among the thuusnnds who leaped into wartime war-time or postwar time divorce, you may already be feeling, as I fi-cl. that a wortlme moratorium on divorce would save a grest denl of heartbreak. Among other fundamental funda-mental stupidities, we humans very often don't know what we want. |
