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Show Kathleen Norris Says: Wait Until After the War Bell Syndicate. WNU Features. MARR1A6E LICENSE BUREAU "Don't jump into a wartime wedding just for the thrill of it." POSTPONE WEDDING The most serious decision in life is the choice of one's partner part-ner in marriage. Hasty, excited ex-cited marriages, under the strain and glamour of war, are all too frequently headed for the rocks. Wait until the war is over, advises Kathleen Norris, Nor-ris, who receives thousands of letters from servicemen and their brides, either or both of whom want to find a way out of their nuptial bonds. It's so easy for a couple to think they are in love when a man is leaving for camp, or is "going across"! All too often it's a passing fancy, but they decide to get married right away . . . then when the "real one" comes along, it means a broken marriage, or a broken heart or both. ' Become engaged yes. All your dreams can be woven about that sweet day when you can be wed in the glorious security se-curity of a new and peaceful day. But don't rush into a war marriage just for the thrill of it. Don't be married in wartime war-time unless the circumstances are really unusual. But if you do marry, stick to it ... at least until after the war. Don't ask for a divorce now, and don't give your permission per-mission for your spouse to obtain ob-tain one. This is no time to take steps that will bind you for life. By KATHLEEN NORRIS A YOUNG army man writes me from Florida that he L was married in March a year ago to one of the girls at home, in a small Iowa town. He and she had known each other from school days; a sort of understanding had existed for some time between them, and when he was called to the service, they decided to be married at once. Just one more of the countless wartime war-time weddings that are going on in every town this very minute! Now he has been away from his wife for 11 months, and has met his dream girl. Nita is exquisite, 18, her family is rich and entertains the servicemen lavishly. She and Max are deeply in love. Max writes home to Sally-Ann that their hurried marriage mar-riage was a mistake. Will she set him free? He can never love any other woman than Nita. He encloses Sally-Ann's answer. She is furious, which seems to him unjust. Gosh, can't a man be honest, hon-est, any morel Sally-Ann says that she hasn't told anyone of his insulting insult-ing proposal, because he may as well know that if he intends any such course he may just as well not plan to come back home. Nobody will speak to him, his uncle won't want him in the business. Sally-Ann's Sally-Ann's father won't give them that house, and Max's mother will break her heart. So there! Thinks This the Real Thing. "What to do?" concludes Max's letter. "Nita will have a bunch of money some day, so that end of it doesn't worry me. I'm not crazy to go back home anyway. But the thing Is, Nita's a pretty excitable sort of girl and she says that if Sally-Ann doesn't come to her senses she'll kill herself, or me, or Sally-Ann of course I know she won't, but it gets me In a heck of a fix even talking about it. I'm sorry as Sally-Ann Sally-Ann is that things have come out this way; she's a fine kid and I'll always like her, but a man certainly wouldn't be fair to go home to his wife while he was loving another woman, would he? Set me straight on this if I'm acting like a fool, but please remember that with Nita and me it's the real thing." That's one letter, to match the letter let-ter I quoted here a few months ago; the letter of a girl at home, her young husband overseas, who had fallen in love with the finest catch of the town, the man popular, charming, rich, successful, about whom she had woven all her girlish dreams. And the soldier husband three years younger than herself, a man without means, who had never had a job of any sort in his life! ' Now, my advice to all these young persons, and thousands of others, is first, don't marry a man just entering enter-ing the service at all, unless the circumstances are unusual. Don't jump into a war-time wedding just for the thrill of it. And secondly, if you do marry, stick to it. Let the message of a divorce-wanting wife or husband be, "After the War." Let neither one grant a divorce' now; not the heartbroken heart-broken bewildered boy to whom his young wife writes airily from all the safety and comfort of home that she has found someone else. Not the dazed bride who has been writing love letters and tending cookies to the boy in camp, only to learn in reply that he has met Nita, 'and wants instant freedom. No Time to Change Minds. This is no time for a boy far from home on a battle front to decide that he doesn't love his wife any more, or for a young wife to write her soldier that she has changed her mind. These are times for stability, trust, faith, constancy. Love of parents, of home, of wedded men and women is all that is going to pull us through this crisis. Max's fancy may indeed have been captivated in his loneliness, his homesickness, by pretty little affectionate affec-tionate Nita. But, on the face of it, isn't he planning to be a sort of hanger-on of Nita's rich father, after the war? Does he think for one minute that Nita is going to like to come to his home town to live, where every one of his old friends knows how he treated Sally-Ann? Does he think that after awhile he isn't going to long for the old ways and the old voices, the familiar street corners, the memories he has shared with his true wife? War is nightmare. Max might remember re-member that there's a dawn coming com-ing after this darkness, when we will all awake. illi There's a dawn coming . . . |
