ch divorce should, or should not, be granted;
for, as will appear directly, I want a much simpler and more radical
reform: also I hold it folly to try to convince the self-blinded. I only
ask the reader to make sure that he (or perhaps more probably she)
really believes that the partners in the marriages that come to the
divorce courts _were joined by God_, and is willing to follow the
argument to its logical conclusion. Are they willing, for instance, to
say that a woman or a man may not put aside the marriage if one of the
two is a lunatic, or a hopeless drunkard, or an habitual criminal, or a
degenerate, or the victim of a disease which can be communicated to the
offspring? Are they willing to go with our ecclesiastical advisers, who
seek to maintain marriages, which may be the cause of perpetuating
disease and crime; the bringing into the world of the children of
drunkards, of epileptics, of syphilitics and of lunatics?

Stop a moment and think what this must mean to the society in which we
live. Can it be considered seriously that the continuance of marriage in
such cases as these can by any juggling be made right--anything except
the most blind-eyed folly and sin?

III

Consider now the position to-day. Amazing marriages have been made under
the urgency of war conditions, reckless marriages, entered into by those
who have known each other for a few days only before marrying for life.
A minister of religion stated quite recently, "I have had to marry many
couples who admitted to me that they knew little about each other. I
could do nothing. I was not allowed to refuse marriage."

There is no excuse now for these criminally hasty marriages; that they
should have been made is one of the tragedies caused by war. It would
prevent endless unhappiness and many divorces if marriages were to be
made conditional, except under very special reasons, on the woman and
the man having been engaged for a fixed and sufficiently long period. I
would recommend this reform to all ecclesiastical opposers of divorce.
Betrothal should be regarded as a much more important ceremony than is
common with us: here again is a way in which we might wisely copy older
civilizations, whose customs were more strictly planned to help men and
women in right living.

In the first year of the war the number of cases heard in the divorce
court rose from 289 to 520, which was the highest figure then on record.
Last season the number had sprung up t