DIVORCE SUITS.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume III, Issue 764, 22 July 1916, Page 7

DIVORCE SUITS.

This, ot' course, comes from nil Anie rican journel:—

As the Mau from Mars ami the Patient Enquirer were walking along the busy thoroughfare, they were importuned by a ragged little newsboy to buy a yellow journal. '.'Very well," said the Patient Enquirer as lie handed the boy a penny, "we shall see what is uew in divorce suits.'' "Divorce suits?" queried the Man from Mars with a puzzled look. "Yes. Don't you have divorce suits in Mars?" "Never heard of them. AVhat are they!" "What a terrible country it must be without divorce suits." "Tell me about them," urged the Man from Mars. "Certainly," agreed the Patient Enquirer. "When two people have been joined in wedlock and find that they are unhappy together, we do not allow them to separate quietly and peacefully. We force them to get into the nastiest kind of quarrel with each other. They have to go before a Judge and tell the innermost secrets of their unhappiness, and invent stories about each other, and hire detectives to spy on each other, and engage insulting lawyers to harry each other, and unless the ease which either one succeeds in making out is sufficiently scandalous, the Judge, in all his superabundant and superhuman majesty, refuses to give his sanction to their separation." "What a mess it must be," declared the Man from Mars. "What purpose does it serve beyond adding to the profits of salacious newspapers?" "Oh," said the Patient Enquirer, "it is one of the backbones of our civilisation. It preserves the sanctity of the home, the indissolubility of the marriage tie, and domestic peace and tranquillity. It provides munificent judicial jobs for politicians, contributes to the support of our most ethical legal profession, and creates a brisk demand for those most valuable of all human phenomena, private detectives." "Would you then advise me to introduce the custom on my planet?" asked the Martian.

"By all mentis,'' replied the other. "You never will be unhappy till you get it."