"ENOCH ARDENS" OF THE WAR.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LX, Issue 16824, 27 November 1916, Page 6

"ENOCH ARDENS" OF THE WAR.

HUSBANDS RETURN TO FIND "WIDOWS" REMARRIED. I : There is a notable multiplication of j domestic dramas of the .type familiar |to us through Tennyson's "Enoch".arden," and to the French in Balzac's "Colonel /Ghabert," who, lost on a Napoleonic battlefield^ returned home to rind his wife remarried to a nobleman of the Restoration. Thus, a Madame JD- -, of Arras, was informed at the beginning of the war that her husband had been killed. Removing to Paris she waited some months, and then married her, brother-in-law. The household is now expecting a child, and the first husband is en his way back fronii Germany. M. Charles le Goffic cites other casss j in the "Liberte." In a small commune near the Channel two soldiers' wives remarried in this way. The deaths of their first husbands were registered, and all th<i papers were in order. But uiese husbands reappeared one fine morning, both of them with amputated limbs. "More curious is the tale\of the Breton soldier whose arm, cut off by a shell, was found on the battlefield, whilst the-.rest of him had disappeared. As the ami carried the identification plate, its owner was reported dead. Ttio wife received a certificate to thisf>f- : feet, and was permitted to remarry. The.first husband; however, proves io be alive, and is inclined to insist on his rights." DECIDED TO REMAIN DEAD.

But the most unfortunate of these tragic misadventures.. was found-in ■Switzerland .recently, i n one. of the parties of seriously wounded soldiers returned from Germany. A French visitor stopped before an unfortunate fellow whose face was so disfigured :-.s to seem no longer human. He asked if lie could do anything for the sufferer, if '■he could seek his family and teil them. ; ."Useless," was the repiy. "He is dead." _ The soldier had risen to the heroic delicacy of deciding that, rather than horrify those he loved, he would leave them to believe him dead. There is a ray of light in th:3, case, however, for the surgeons hold out hope of a great, improvement, and if it is accomplished their patient will give up his nc.me and eomp to life again. "But perhaps, adds M. le Goffic, "it may be then too late,'' This is no question of a few curious disasters. It is said .with some show of authority that there are 70,000 French prisoners m Germany who have not1 been able to communicate with thgir families. The French law requires ten months of widowhood before remarriage. The question is being asked whether this delay should not be extended, and Maitre Henri Robert, the eminent pleader, is one of those who i think that soldiers' wives should not remarry before the end of the war.