WAR’S “ENOCH ARDEN'S.”

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume VI, Issue 275, 6 November 1916, Page 2

WAR’S “ENOCH ARDEN'S.”

HUSBANDS FIND “WIDOWS” remarried. CURIOUS DOMESTIC DRAMAS IN FRANCE. There is a notable multiplication of domestic-dramas of the type familiar io us through Tennyson’s “Enoch Arden;” and to tfae French in Balzac’s “Colonel Chabert,” who, lost on a Napo.eonic battlefield, returned home to find his wife remarried to a'• nobleman of the Restortion, writes the “Chronicle’s Paris correspondent. Thus, a Madame D of Arras, was informed at. the. beginning of the war that her husband had been killed; Removing to Paris she waited some months, and then married her brother-in-law. The household is now expecting a phild, and the first husband is on his way back from Germany. M, Charles le Goffic cites other cases m the “Liberte,”. “In a small commune near the Channel two-soldiers’ wives remarried in this way. The death of their first husbands was registered; and all the papers were in, order. But these husbands reappeared one fine morning, both of them with amputated limbs. “More curious is the tale of the Breton soldier, whose arm, cut off by a shell, was found on the battlefield, while the rest of him had disappeared. As the arm. carried the identification plate, its owner was repoPted dead. The wife received a certificate to this effect, and was permitted to re-marry. The first husband, however, proves to be alive, and inclined to insist on his rights.” DECIDED TO REMAIN DEAD. But the most unfortunate of these tragic misadventures was found in Switzerland recently, in one of the parties of seriously wounded, soldiers returned from Germany. A French visitor stopped before an unfortunate fellow whose face was so disfigured as' to seem rid longer human, lie asked if he could do anything for the sufferer, if he could seek his family and tell them. . . “Useless,” was the reply. “HE is dead.” The soldier had risen to the heroic delicacy of deciding that, rather than horrify those he loved, he would leave them to believe him dead. _ There is a ray of light in this case, for the surgeons hold out hope of a great improvement, and if it is accomplished their patient will give up his name and come to life again. “But perhaps,. adds M. le Goffic, “it may. bn then too late.” . ; This is no. question of a few curious disasters. “It is said with some show of authority that there are 70,000 French prisoners in Germany wild have not been able to communicate with their families, The French law requires 10 months of widowhood before remarriage. The ouestion is being .asked whether this delay should not be extended, and Maitre Henri Robert, the eminent-pleader, is one of. those who think that : soldiers’ wives should not re-marry before'the end of the. war.