DIVORCE DETAILS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIV, Issue 744, 28 June 1923, Page 5

DIVO RCE DETAILS.

OBJECTION TO SECRECY. OPINION OF ENGLISH JUDGE. LONDON, June 26. Mr Justice Duke, in giving evidence before the House of Commons committee with regard to the publication of details of divorce cases, said it was very desirable, in the interests of morality, that something should bo clone in regard to wilful and unsoniPlous publication of indecent matter for the purposes of gain, but tlio administration of the law should be carried on absolutely publcly, He wmld not support the prohibition of the publication of anything concerning divorce oases except the result, as this would bo dangerous. He had come to the conclusion that the mass of the people who were brought under the junsuiction of the Divorce Court had a sense of shame and a repugnance to the publication of the conduct into which they they had been betrayed. He personally thought this a most wholesome state of things. If the administration of the divorce law wore treated as a secret and private affairs between the parties, the persons who would be relieved would bo those who most deserved public condemnation. Publicity was a real deterrent, but no good purpose was served by relating to the genera! public the indecent details placed sometimes before the Court. It was true that this portion of the law was conducted in camera in foreign countries, but English standards of conduct were different and foreign methods of procedure might not be. suitable. The experience of the past did not recommend that a change bo made.—A, and N.Z. cable, MATRIMONIAL CAUSES Bill, LONDON, Juno 20. The House of Lords carried the second reading of Major Entwistlo’s Matrimonial Causes Dill. Lord Buckmaster, in moving the second reading, said that the opponents of the bill urged that the temptation to women to commit an act of infidelity was far less than the temptation to men. Many men wore wont to speak with confidence on subjects of which they could know nothing. On what basis did they estimate the different storms of temptations by which men and women alike were swept away? Ho did not think a wife would resort to the bill merely for a single not of adultery. Lord Bravo moved the rejection of the bill, opposing all extension of the ground for divorce in order to stop its spread. Ho said he was afraid Britain was degenerating into the condition of America, whore the state of affairs was merely camouflaged polygamy and polyandry. Lord Birkenhead supported the Bill, though he would have preferred a comprehensive instead of a piecemeal reform of the divorce law. The Archbishop of Canterbury said he would vote for the bill simply because it was confined entirely to the dissolution of marriage on the specific ground of adultery. If it had multiplied the grounds of divorce, lie would nave opposed it.—A. and N.Z. cable.