o 775, while on the present term's
lists there are nearly 800 cases, showing the exceeding increase on the
pre-war rate. A large percentage of the marriages which are dissolved by
the court have been contracted since August, 1914. Petition after
petition is filed praying for the dissolution of marriages which should
never have been made. English law makes marriage far too easy. In
addition to this alarming increase in divorce, a greater number of
deeds of separation have been drawn up in the last two years than in
any preceding twenty-five; cases of bigamy have also become very
frequent, by women as well as by men.

A stage has now been reached when the cry for reform must be listened
to. Something has got to be done. The unhappiness and failure in many
marriages looms before us a colossal, an unprecedented and menacing
fact. Our eyes cannot any longer remain shut to the damning proofs which
confront us from so many sides.

IV

The question as to how our ridiculous and immoral system of divorce--(I
really must use those terms)--was ever permitted to come into use may be
answered very briefly. The Church ordained that marriage is
indissoluble, but, this being found impossible in practice, the State
stepped in with a way of escape--a kind of emergency exit. But what a
makeshift it was! how flagrantly dishonest, how indecent! Adultery must
be committed, and, in the case of the woman claiming relief, cruelty or
desertion must be added to the adultery. To escape the degradation of an
unworthy partner another partner must first be sought, home-life
wrecked by the worst kind of conduct, and marriage degraded by an act of
infidelity.

Now, this kind of thing is bad, and no possible shuffling can make it
right; it is, indeed, so offensive to the feelings of most of us that it
is very rarely, if ever, that the immoral and harmful way in which it
acts is put into plain words.

The divorce law with its materialistic refusal to accept any grounds for
divorce except physical infidelity, physical cruelty or desertion, makes
for a low view of marriage. Further, it directly encourages perjury, in
fact makes lying essential to obtaining the relief of the law. The law
refuses to legalize divorce by the consenting desire of both
parties--calls such a wise arrangement collusion; yet it cannot prevent
what everyone knows is done in the great majority of decently conducted
divorce suits, where desertion and infidelity take place by ar