dren hold parents together when the opposition is not too
strong; and when a separation occurs, those who favor divorce claim that
a child is better off with either father or mother alone than with both
if love is absent.

In the third place, it is pointed out that often only one desires the
divorce and that this brings tragedy to the other life. In reply it is
claimed that many of the tragedies of life have always gathered around
the love of men and women, that when marriage is declined tragedy often
follows, and that compelling a person to live with some one whom he does
not love, and may even dislike, is more tragic than any separation.

In conclusion, advocates of free divorce claim that their proposals are
profoundly conservative, that they are seeking to bring marriage back to
its eternally binding realities. They say that under our present
conditions of restricted divorce, we have wide-spread prostitution,
constant irregularities that are tolerated and condoned, and a million
divorced people, some prevented from remarrying and all socially
ostracized, so that the whole group is a dangerous element in our midst.
These advocates claim that with free divorce, granted some months after
the determination to separate had been registered in the public records,
the love of men and women and their mutual love for their children would
be free to bind families together in permanent trust and open honesty;
and that with all excuse for irregularity absent, the unfaithful man or
woman would sink to the level of unfaithfulness in business or political
life. With freedom to readjust their lives, if they preferred to keep
what they had and get what they could, they would simply take their
place among thieves and liars, and most of them would disappear.

All transitions are hard, and this one in which we are involved is most
difficult of all; but no one can study the conditions around him without
seeing that change is inevitable and that we are not going back to our
earlier ideals. At the same time, no one can read the singularly
scholarly and fair-minded presentations of Ellen Key[55] without feeling
that she has a vision of the future.

[55] _The Century of the Child._ New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1907.
_Love and Marriage_, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1911. _Love and Ethics._ New
York: B.W. Huebsch, 1911.

With regard to the nature of the material plant in which the family
should live, there are also two widely different ideals str