English Girls Who Marry Foreigners.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLV, Issue 19, 9 November 1910, Page 61

English Girls Who Marry Foreigners.

HOW THEY ARE CHEATED. THE SOCIAL WRECKAGE OE DIVORCE. The eminent lawyers who were assembled in London at the International ConKerence in August found the subjects of marriage and divorce so fascinating that their discussion strayed from strict law and precedent, and entered the bounds iof psychological examination. Mr R. B. I). Acland, K.C., read a paper contrasting divorce in Canada and in the United States. In Canada, he said, the ancient iriew of marriage as a lifelong union of a man and a woman still held the field, (whereas in the United States marriage (was coming to be regarded as a contract ®f a much less permanent character, (which might be terminated without much /difficulty by either party. So far from the cause of greater frequency of divorce lying in greater liberality as to the grounds, he said the fact was that British Columbia, where divorces were most frequent, was the very part of the country in which the grounds of divorce Were most restricted. As the American statistics showed, there was something in the air of the West which stimulated married persons to seek for freedom. Over A Million Marriages Dissolved. Such cases as one in which it was admitted that a man might have one lawful wife in Connecticut and another in New York had no parallel in Canada. During the forty years in which Canada ihad slowly been compiling a beggarly total of 430 divorces, the States of the (neighbouring republic had dissolved 11,274,341 marriages. The popularity of divorce in the United States was increasing at a very rapid rate—about three times as fast as the increase in the population. Professor Lichtenberger, of the University of Pennsylvania, for example, looked upon increased divorce, as well as increasing Insanity, Suicide and Crime as part of the social wreckage which strewed the path of advance. It was significant to notice that in Canada more dhan a half of the divorces were at the instance of the husband. There was probably no other country where an active and intelligent woman could so easily support herself. To a considerable extent this may account for the readiness iOf American women to seek for divorce. But many other causes were at work. ‘‘Probably the greatest of all is the impatience of all restraint which is characteristic of the present generation,” he paid. “The conviction that we ought to have anything we want seems to be becoming the main article in the working breed of a large part of the population. A young woman brought up to think that nothing ought to stand in the way of the gratification of her caprices is pretty sure to find it irksome to have to consult the wishes and convenience of a husband. Mr J. K. Levy complained that women were shut out from the discussion of these matters. Did they think the result was a very happy one? Sir KTohn Gray Hill said it was certain we could never arrive at an absolute dissolving of the difficulties and the establishment of one universal and interinational law on the subject of divorce. There were other Great Religious Difficulties.

There was a part of Christendom (which held divorce to be unlawful in any circumstance, and there was the Mohammedans, who held it to be lawful (without any cause whatever. In a paperemphasising the hardships inflicted upon parties to “international” marriage by the difference in the laws of various countries, Dr. Gaston Deleval (legal adviser to the British Legation) inIstanced the case of an English girl marrying, in London, a young Belgian without the formal consent of the latter’s parents. After a few weeks the husband wished to repudiate the girl, and confessed the whole story to his father. The latter, believing, perhaps rightly, that the young English girl knew perfectly well that the boy’s parents would have refused their consent, and that he was under age, wanted the marriage to be declared void. If he brought the case before the English court he could (not succeed, such marriage being valid according to English law. If he brought it before the Belgian court or ’any other JDontinental court, the marriage was Bure to be declared void. But, then,

■What Would Become of tlie Girl 1 By her marriage she had become a Belgian, but the marriage being void in Belgium and everywhere else, except in England, she retained her British nationality. If she wished to remarry, the English courts, holding her marriage as being valid, would treat her as a bigamist. If she sued her husband for divorce she was probably certain to be unsuccessful, because: (a) In Belgium and other Continental countries, the marriage having been declared void there could be no question of divorce; (b) in England, the husband being a Belgian domiciled in Belgium, the English courts had no jurisdiction. The consequence was that the poor English girl, thanks to the British laws, had all the burdens of marriage and none of its compensations. He suggested as a remedy that either the English jurist should change his views on this point of international law and agree with all Continental laws, or, this sacrifice being too great, then, at least, English authorities should never allow a marriage to take place in England between an English girl and a foreigner unless the latter had satisfied the British authorities that all conditions necessary had been complied with so as to render the proposed marriage valid in his own country.