TWO NATIONALITIES

Greymouth Evening Star, 2 October 1928, Page 7

TWO NATIONALITIES

..... nim> NEW FRENCH LAW PUZZLE. The town halls of the various boroughs of Paris were crowded one day last month with French-born wives of Britons, Americans, and other foreigners anxious to reclaim their lost rights to French nationality. They lost this right on their wedding days, when they assumed the nationality of their husbands, but an Act passed last year by . the French Parliament gave them the right to claim their original nationality on the condition that they made application at their local town hall before August 15. “Women who take advantage of this privilege,” said an international lawyer, “will be in a. peculiar position.” He added: “A Frenchwoman who marries an Englishman and thereby becomes a. British, subject will possess two nationalities in. future. She will continue to be British in British law and at the same time French in French law, and therefore can have two passports, one British and one French. “The trouble will begin when her children, and particularly her sons, grow up, for the French authorities most certainly will claim them as French. and the boys will have Io s-u-ve in (he, French Army. Many fathers, particularly Britons, will object strongly to their fpns being claimed as French.”