BANNED

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17180, 10 February 1930, Page 7

BANNED

LOST NATIONALITY CONGRESS WOMAN WASHINGTON, Jan. 29. Because she is the widow of an Eng. lishman, a protest has been ,made against the right of Mrs. Ruth Bryan Owen to sit in the United States Congress, despite the fact that she took out naturalisation papers in 1922. The Congressional committee of elections is adjudicating in tins interesting protest, following Mrs. Owen's election from Florida. The daughter of William Jennings Bryan, and herself a public speaker of great ability, Mrs. Owen, in 1910, married Major Reginald Owen, of the Royal Engineers, who was wounded in the' Palestine campaign, and subsequently died. A United States law, passed'in 1907, compels an American woman' who marries a foreigner to adopt her .husband's nationality. Airs.'Owen protests against this law, arguing that a woman should not lose her nationality by marrying, any more than a man who happens to marry a foreign woman. She resumed American citizenship by taking out naturalisation papers.in 1922, but the election committco protested on the ground that one must have been a citizen of the United States'for a full seven years before election to congress. Recently a deputation from the British National Council of Women waited on the Home Minister, Mr. Clynes, and urged that the Government should obtain the concurrence of the Dominions and foreign 'Governments in establishing the principle, that a British woman, by marrying an alien, should not thereby. without her consent, lose her British nationality, nor should a foreign woman on marrying a Briton, l>ecome a British subject without her consent. Sir. Clynes doubted whether the advantages of the, change could be realised without a general international agreement, but he said that lie would report the representation to the Prime Minister, Mr. MacDonald.