"ENOCH ARDENS" OF THE WAR.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 229, 24 November 1916, Page 8 (Supplement)

"ENOCH ARDENS" OF THE WAR.

HUSBANDS RETURN TO FIND "WIDOWS" REMARRIED.

There is a notable multiplication of domestic dramas of the tyjie familiar to us through Tennyson's ''Enoch Ardeii," and to the French in Balzac's "Colonel Chabert," who, lost on r. Napoleonic battlefield, returned home to find his wife remarried to a nobleman of the Restoration.

Thus, a Madame D , of Arras, was informed at the beginning of tho 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 on his way back from Germany. M. C'h arles le Goffie cites other cas-»s 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 the papers were in order. But these 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 fouii'i, tin thct battlefield, whilst the rest of him had disappeared. As the arm carried the identification plate, its owner was reported dead. Tic? wife received a certificate to this effect, ami was permitted to remarry. The first husband, however, proves to 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, in one of the parties of seriously wounded soldiers returned from Germany. A French visitor stopped before an unfortunate fellow whose face was so disfigured as to seem no longer human. He asked if he could do anything for the sufferer, if he tould seek his family and tcH them. "Useless," was the reply. "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 this ease, however, for the surgeons hold out hope of a great improvement, and if it is accomplished their patient will give up his name and come to life again. "But perhaps, adds M. lo Goffie, "it may be then too late."

This is no question of a few curio.is disasters. It is said with some show of authority that there are 70,000 Fr'enc-.'i prisoners in Germany who have not been able to communicate with their families. The French law requires ten months of widowhood befor'e 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 think that soldiers' wives should not remarry before the end of the war.