CANKER OF DIVORCE

Evening Star, Issue 19143, 9 January 1926, Page 3

CANKER OF DIVORCE

A CANON'S VIEWS Almost every traveller to America can be reckoned to bring back a different impression of the country. But when two parsons, and two distinguished London parsons at that, take directly opposite views as to America’s status in modern civilisation perhaps it is to look into the matter. Dean luge says that America is the “best ever” as a nation. Canon Carnegie, of Westminster, who is a. more cheerful but loss lime-lit dignitary, declares that America is going to the dogs, and puts it down to the unsacredness of marriage and the multiplicity of ’divorces. “The canker in the life of America is divorce,” remarks Canon Carnegie on his return from New York. “it is a canker which is rotting away the heart of'that great States practically every marriage, after a short and very hectic period, ends in the Divorce Court. The modern American couple get married with the idea of divorcing each other within a fortnight. The laws of America help them to do it. “They can get divorce for anything. Hundreds of excuses are ready to their hand; incompatibility of temperament, the man’s fondness for baseball, the way the woman wears her hair anything will servo. The danger is very grave, and is growing daily more serious.” Dean Inge retorts: “America is far in advance of this country and of Europe generally in material things. She is undoubtedly the strongest nation in the world, and ns she is really invulnerable the Americans can devote their enormous wealth to improving themselves, whereas we have, to spend a quarter of our income on burglary insurance—in other words, on armaments.” Canon Carnegie: “I say with all seriousness that America is degenerating from a human society into a mon-key-house. 'Die prevalence of divorce may well mean the end of their civilisation, and if it spread oyer here it would mean the end of civilisation altogether. Life simply could not go on under such conditions. “ Luckily England is having none of this divorce madness. Over here it is only the degenerate nob and the degenerate poor—people who have nothing else to do but think hbnut sex—who follow the American folly. England is too sane and too balanced a country to do that.” The* Dean comes rather more into line with this when ho says: “The theory is not borne out that the socalled old families have any intrinsic superiority.' In New _ Haven 1 found nearly half the population Italian. Now, if that is typical, and 1 am afraid it is, it means a foreign conquest of America and a foreign conquest of the worst kind. The new Americans, a mongrel horde, will not he exactly the kind of men whom Washington or Lincoln would have welcomed as fellow-citi-zens.”

Says Canon Carnegie : “ Staggered as 1 am by the colossal prosperity and material splendor of the United Stairs, I can only shake my bead d Dean Inge’s prediction that America will lead the world and that England is going down hill. I thi"k im is quite wrong. Tn civilisation and culture England is far ahead of America. “ Both countries arc developing. England is doing so not because America Is influencing her, but because of the pulse in tbs blood of tho AngloSaxon which forces him to go forward. And you mnst remember that yon can breed'the best Anglo-Saxons only in an Anglo-Saxon country. The breed is pure here, and tho urge forward will he the more powerful. Tn America the breed is mixed.

“That is their trouble--to Anglicize the whole nation. That is why the country as a whole is indifferent to England. Ton cannot expect a mixed race of people thousands of miles away to care much about us.”