AN AMAZING DEGREE.

Taihape Daily Times, 20 June 1918, Page 3

AN AMAZING DEGREE.

Wo are all so absorbed by our new (Man Rower problems that we pray not have noticed an amazing decree issued by the Bolshevik Government, says the Daily Chronicle. .It is this, that any person, in any country, can become to a naturalised Russian and remain where ho is, simply by making a declaration before an accredited Russian representative on the spot. If this decree were accepted there would arise a situation worthy a place in an Anthony Hope novel. A Ruritanian stays in Ruritania, but substitutes Russian for Ruritanian nationality. Comes a threat of war, and the king calls for his army. ‘‘Sire, we are all Russian citizens, and must remain neutral in this war,” he is answered He would turn to his amazons. But in nearly every land a wife automatically takes the nationality ‘of her husband. America is the great exception: there an American woman remains an American whether she marry the man in the moon or a man from Mesopotamia. France, on the other hand, insists that, even in the case of a bigamous marriage, the second ‘wife’ though a foreigner and married in a foreign land, becomes French. But the Bolsheviks decree would plant Russia everywhere.