SOVIET DIVORCES.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XLIX, Issue 13907, 7 November 1919, Page 7

SOVIET DIVORCES.

THE METHODS (*F HL'XGARY

Mr .). C. Segrue. the Budapest correspondent of the Daily News, wrote as fellows on the eve of the crisis which resulted in the downfall of the Mela Ktui dictatorship:—

Willi mutual consent. divorce is granted almost automatically. and, since the letter and the spirit of tbe law alike ordain it. without any in-

vestigation on the part of the judges. An application lor a divorce by one of i!ie parties-, even though there is opposition from the other party, is aimosr invariably granted. The husband. if he happens fo be the petitioner, must satisfy -Jie Court that he is prepared an-.! able to pay the allowance which the judges grant the wife. The judges invariably grant the petition, hut insist that ihe. financial arrangements must satisfy the woman. The omotion of the guardianship of the children in such oases is. as my personal investigation showed, almost always solved in favor of the woman. The reasons urged in support of the petition are often extremely flimsy. Tn one of the divorce cases T heard the petitioning husband say his wife did not ccok well enough: in another case the husband said his wife stayed too long in bed in the morning. thus neglecting the house and the children.

Most of the petitioners are middleaged or elderly men. The explanation, is simple and unpleasant. The Hungarian husiiand sees in ihe new divorce law an easy, legal way to break off the. contract with the wearied and elderly woman who. as ihe case may be. for the past 20 or 30 years has been bis partner, and to form another union with one younger and more attractive. Hungarian woman age rapidly. and whatever physical attraction there was in the marriage- soon passes, and in tinabsence of any elcener and nobler feeling the men now flock" to the DivorceCourt to get release from their vows. Another and equally potent motive explains this eagneriicss of Hungarian men to get divorce's. Tn Hungary", as elsewhere on the Continent, marriage is rather a commercial transaction than a. romance. Evc*n the beautiful woman, were she poor, found the doors to niatriuionv closed, and men married mainly not because they loved women, bui be-e-ause they wanted their money. A dowrv was the one thing essential for marriage-, and an assured private income on the part of the wife was tho

safest guarantee of the* husbaiul's unfailing loyalty and devotion. The introduction of Communism and the confiscation e>f all private property caused the foundations of most of such '•'Mammon marriage's" to collapse. It is not surprising, therefore, that the women of Hungary are most violently opposed fo the new marriage and divorce' law. The ideal aimed at by theCommunist framers of the law may be high and theoretically sound, but in this domain, as elsewhere in the movement., no account of men's frailty is taken. That vast change in the spirit which must precede' great social revolutions is still a long way off. It is theoretically possible for a man (or .i woman) to get married and divoreed six times a week. Marriage* could be performed e>ach we-ekday morning, and. if the petition was a mutual one. elivorce could be obtained! each we-okdav afternoon. On Sundays the c.urts do not sit. As a matter of fact. there- seem to be singularly fenv abuses of The- new law. and the marriage of shortest dnration which I saw dissolved had been contracted towards the mitidle of June'. Tn the first exciting weeks of tin- Communist regime, whem traciitiems. customs, anel habitual restraints went into the iiie'ltiiig-pot. the marriage and elivorce regulations wcro eertainlv abused. "Week-end" marriages took olaci-. but their number was extremely limite-d. One striking c-ase of "quick •■hange'"' married life came* under my personal notice. A young couple; appeared before the judges- and petitioned for a divorce. The wife wept bitterly, anel the husband did not seem overhappv during the proceedings, but as the- application was a mutual one the i juelges had no alternative than to grant it. The parties left, the court nigethe'r. and. apparently regretting the divorce, presented themselves during the- afternoon at a Government marriage bureau and were remarried. This-ea-e was described to me as a "rec.irei" one.