more divorces per year than were recorded in all the other
so-called Christian countries put together. For 1905, statistics show
nearly 68,000 divorces in the United States as against the highest
number from Germany, which is only a trifle above 11,000, and from
France, 10,860, and running down rapidly to the number of 33 in
Canada. In England, in 1905, there was but one divorce to 400
marriages. In the United States, in the same year, one divorce to
every 12 marriages. Since that count was taken, there has been no
evidence of a halt in the tendency of the United States to lead the
rest of the Christian world in this matter of separation of those once
joined together by marriage vows. In some of the States, the showing
is more pronounced on the side of free divorce than in other States,
since in Washington, Oregon, and Montana one divorce to every five
marriages is reported, in Colorado and Indiana one to every six, and
in Oklahoma, California, and Maine one to every seven marriages. We
need not accept the doleful suggestion of Professor Willcox that if we
go on this way, "by 1950 one-fourth of all marriages will be
terminated by divorce, and by 1990 one-half so terminated," for it is
not necessary or likely that we shall "go on" in this particular.
Already, movements toward the strengthening of family ties and the
better training of youth to responsibility, movements that tend to
make marriage less brittle, are inaugurated.

=Cannot Now Make Family an Autocracy.=--There are several points that
all must agree upon if we are to stay the rush to the divorce courts
and yet not attempt the futile task of turning the family order back
to the patriarchal or the monarchical types. In those types there was
little or no legal divorce, it is true, but in them inhered social
evils that often killed the spirit of marriage, and doomed the
children of enforced unions to physical weakness, mental
defectiveness, moral taint, and affectional suffering.

First of all, it should be noted that, although the divorce statistics
are serious indictments of American life and bode ill to American
society, they are not wholly a testimony to bad conditions. They are
also a testimony that he who runs may read, to the determination of
men, and especially of women, to exact a higher reality of mutual
love, mutual respect, mutual service, and mutual cooeperation within
the marriage bond.

=New Standards of Marriage Success.=--When it was decided to