MARRIAGE BILL.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 178, 29 June 1937, Page 8

MARRIAGE BILL.

HOUSE OF LORDS DEBATE

GREAT PHYSICIAN’S VIEW

Received June 29, 1.55 p.m. LONDON, July 28. Mr A. P. Herbert’s Marriage Bill passed tho second reading of the House of Lords without a division The most striking speech was that of Lord Dawson of Penn, the famous physician, who said it must not be thought that an increase in divorce meant a corresponding increase in marriage failures. Women m the past had not more freedom ill sex than under the law, but in the years succeeding the War women had a freedom of companionship hitherto unknown, and with a freedom of euaulity had come an increase In sex consciousness. . . . . , He regretted the omission of inveterate alcoholism and drug-taking as grounds for divorce. “It is onlv members of our professional who have known the desperate state of fear in a home in which one of the partners is a victim, he said. The Bishop of Birmingham supported the Bill because it seemed to be in accordance with the Spirit o Christ.

The chief features of flic measure, which has been approved by representative churchmen, are extension of the ground, for divorce from adultery to include desertion for three yean cruelty,, and insanity for five years, and a provision that there shall bo no divorce within five yearn of a marriage. , Mr Herbert, who is senior burgess foi Oxford University, is the well-known novelist and journalist. Ho sought election to Parliament for the explicit purpose of championing reforms m the ' ‘'mcc lav . which he claimed to be overdue, through unwillingness of parties and Government, o take up his proposals, which wore liable offend a strong minority feeling. ai Though they commanded widespread but unorganised support.