ACID TEST OF LOVE

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 3715, 19 October 1926, Page 2

ACID TEST OF LOVE

MARRIAGES STILL MADE IN HEAVEN

The watchful cynic in the Divorce Court is like a pig in clover—free to glut himself upon his favorite diet of human disillusionment and despair. The sordid panorama has the clay feet of cherished idols for its unending theme (writes Charles Pilley, in the ‘ Sunday Chronicle ’)• , , . Hero is a bawling nightmare of matrimonial strife which only yesterday was love’s young dream; there a devastating domestic tragedy which not long since was a comedy oi light and laughter. As each fresh bundle oi soiled linen is tossed into the legal laundry the cynic’s grin broadens, his cup of sour wine is full to the brim. You may overhear him any day as he chuckles out his gratified spleen. “So much for love, the stuff the poets rave about, the whirling madness which they tell us m*kes the world go round. WHEN PESSIMISTS SMILE.

“Is not the activity of the Divorce Court a standing proof that all poets are mad, that love is humanity’s crowning delusion, that the relations of the sexes are governed by the basest instincts of mankind?” The Divorce Court is one of the few places where the pessimist manages to smil».

Yet what sickly rubbish it all is, to be sure. If these sour-mouthed critics of marriage were anything else but liars or dupes, if love was not still the sovereign comfort of human hearts, there would be divorce courts working overtime in every town, with unmanageable queues of applicants seeking their merciful aid. Because a couple of thousand married people in a year insist upon reciting their grievances to Lord Merrivale or Mr Justice Hill some folk rashly conclude that marriage is a decaying institution and love a spent force. It is like predicting a second deluge from a single wet week in July. THE TRUTH. The truth is, believe me, that what goes on in the Divorce Court has as a rule very little to do with love in any proper sense of that much-abused term. In the majority of instances it is not that love has failed, but that marriages have been embarked upon without that wholesome preservative, and after a spell of rank sensuality putrefaction has set in. I make bold to say that most of the marriages terminated behind that Gothic facade in the Strand are those which ought never to have been begun. Fools who confuse a fleeting sex impulse with the love that can laugh in the face of the passing years are likely to have a short tenure of their paradise. It is easy enough, in the common phrase, to fall in love—and to fall out of love; but the only basis for lifelong union is the love that knows neither “ins” nor “outs,” burning with asteady flame, fusing two lives into that wondrous unity which is the sacred mystery of sex. Oh, yes, my cynical friend, it is the old-fashioned love I am talking about, as old at least as the Garden of Eden and as new as the newest of the season’s brides. Do you tell me it has failed, that men and women have lost_ the knack of happy mating, that hielong joy in wedlock is beyond the range of human experience ? STILL, MADE IN HEAVEN. Come‘ with me and I will prove you a liar fifty times over in my own small circle of acquaintances. Look around you, and you shall see your refutation in the smiling eyes of half the world. If the Divorce Court,, proves anything it proves the indispensabihty of love as the basis of marriage; the transoience of mere lust; the epliemeia 1 nature of the box when divided, from the deeper sympathies. It is true, alas! that there are marriages taking place every day which arc a hideous travesty of ideal wedlock. It is also true, thank God, that marriages are being solemnised every hour winch in all human probability will last unspoiled till one party or the other sets out on that last silent journey which everv human soul must make alone. As well try to separate such married lovers as to explode the atom, tecoft as you will, there are still marriages that are made in heaven. A HARD QUESTION.

Can the true love be distinguished from the false? Youth is headstrong and impetuous, lacks experience, is all too apt to be trapped by the rank scent of poisoned flowers. Is there an acid test ? Well, let me talk to my own sex. If that girl upon whom you have set your heart were suddenly to lose her beautv of face and form, no longer to stir your pulses with the fever of desire, no more to send the blood racing like rich wine through every vein in your body, would you still * prize her friendship, crave her sympathy and understanding, consider a day ill-spent which had not enabled you both to prove anew the essential kinship of your hearts and minds? A hard question, no doubt 3 but face it.

The miracle of marriage is that lor millions of mated couples this heartsearching question lias _no terrors. In their own lives, and in the eyes ol those upon whom their love has stamped the image ol their youth, they are finding the answer to life’s age-long enigma. With love as the rider, marriage is an “odds on” starter in the Happiness Stakes. Back it all ways. You’ll be sure of a good place.