WOMEN AND MARRIAGE

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3070, 4 May 1917, Page 3

WOMEN AND MARRIAGE

THE OUTLOOK FOB THE FUTUKE. In the last number of the "Literary Digest" there is a discussion as to the future prospects of women ia regard to marriage, several, writers averring that for the good of the world the system of polygamy should bo instituted. iWhile one writer states that "alleged State necessity will attempt to, drive out love on the material ground of •'more children first, , " a different point of view ia put forth by another who' builds his premises -upon existing facts. y Sayathis writer: "The war is giving a wholesale reality to sex which the commercialism of peace was destroying. ■ "When the chatter • of hysterical pacifists has passed away we shall recogliise that Europe to-day is far nearer to the kingdom of heaven than in the times when she thought! only in terms of stock exchanges and markets and ,' votes." « '.''■"■&■' report from England sars that the marriage rate has largely increased . since the beginning the war. A report from France says,-the same thing, with the_ added information that direct love-making is taking the place of the old family bargain system, and that .the dowry, hitherto essential, is no longer being considered. We do not know what sort of babies these mar- , riages will produce, but -we suspeot . that they will be of the common or garden variety. We do not 'believe that they will.be decadent babies, whatever a decadent baby may be. In point . of fact they will be just babies.", One of. the most interesting chapters ■ in H. G. Wells's new volume "What is Coming ? A European Forecast" (Mac- . millan) dis.ctssea "What the War is

Doing for Women." His conclusion is that "this war is accelerating rather than deflecting the.stream of tendency, and is bringing us rapidly to a state of affairs in,which women will be much more definitely independent of their sexual status, much lose hampered in their self-development, and much more nearly equal to men, than has ever been known before in the whole history of mankind."

The big fact is that besides tho expected traditional service in nurture, and nursing women have more i than made good in every conoeivable occupation which they have taken up during the war. They have revolutionised'the estimate of their economic importance. The war, according to Mr. Wells, has merely brought about, with the rapidity of a landslide, a state of affairs tor which the world was ripe. The world after the war will have to adjust itself to this extension of women's employment, and to this increase in the proportion of self-respecting, self-support-mc; women. Polygamy is hardly a probability of the near future "even in Germany," in Mr. W ells's opinion. He does not see "any great possibility of a specially rich class capable of maintaining numerous 'wives being sustained in the impoverished and indebted world of Europe, nor the sources from which a supply of women preferring to become constituents in a polygamous constellation rather than .self-supporting free women, is to be derived. The temperamental dislike of intelligent women to polygamy is at least as strong as a "man's objection to polyandry." There are also considerable.obstacles in rnligion and custom to be overcome by the innovating polygamist "even in Germany." Moreover, an increasing proportion of men may cease even to become monogamists. Romantic excitements of war have produced a temporary rise in the British marriage rate, but before the war it had been falling slowly and the average age at. marriage had been rising.' Resumption of thiß process is quite possible, and_ it may be aeaelerat&d as a new generation grows up to restore the balance of the 6exes.

Everywhere 'the war signifies economic stress that must continue long after tho war is over. Such stress in modern states means fewer children. A marriage that does not ripen into a

close personal friendship between wo equals, Mr. Wells thinks, will bo regarded with increasing definiteness as an unsatisfactory marriage "Marriago i 3 likely to count for loss sud less as a. state ami for more and moro as a personal relationship. It is likely to bo an affair, of diminishing public and increasing private importation. People who marry arc likely to remam : so 'far.as practical cuds 150, more detached and separable. The essential link will be the lovo and affection and uot the home."