DIVORCE AND IMMORALITY.

Taranaki Daily News, 2 December 1919, Page 4

DIVORCE AND IMMORALITY.

As the law stands at present adultery is I not a crime, but a matter of dissolving the marriage tie where the wife is at fault and the payment of damages to the injured husband. A thief who steals money or goods is sent to prison, but one who steals a woman's reputation is only required to pay compensation—and that not always. During war time many married men had to leave their wives and go to the front—more particularly in the case of officers—with the result of an unprecedented crop of petitions for divorce, and not a few tragedies. It was recently said by a barrister, having a large practice in the English Divorce Court, that people make mistakes in t marriage, and then find themselves up against a barrier which they cannot surmount unless one or the other is guilty of immorality. That there are such cases is beyond question, but they only form a portion of the scandals that are the subject of applications for divorce. It is not to be inferred that a general decadence of morals is swelling the lists of divorce cases. Eather is it an indication that the modern craving for liberty of action—in other words, unbridled license—is becoming deplorably evident, and that immorality of this kind is not only tolerated but encouraged by the smallness of the penalty which as a rule is inflicted. In a recent divorce case, heard at Wanganui, in which the corespondent, a farmer, was a married man with a young family, the jury awarded £IOOO damages. This was an admitted intimacy with the woman while her husband was at the war. Most rightminded people will think that any woman whose husband was fighting for his home and country would have been safe from immoral overtures. Unfortunately such has not been the case, and the verdict of the jury evidently marked their | reprobation for the offence committed by | the correspondent. So long as there are human beasts who prey on women's weakness, so long should juries mete out the heaviest penalties. Even that will not suffice to stem the evil unless backed up by protest and ostracism on the part of the community. Men of this kind should be procluded from holding any public office. Moral laxity on the part of public men is frequently overlooked, if not condoned,' 1 We Bhould really exact from men holding public positions the highest code of morals and clean living. If we don't it will be a poor look out for New Zealand, for no country can be truly great that tolerates loose living on the part of its public men. Public action can do more in ensuring moral rectitude than courts of law. TJrftil the legislature provides more rational and effective remedies than at present whereby the marriage tie can be legally broken by either party, it must be treated with the respect due to all laws. The whole fabric of society is built up on morality, the infringement of which cannot fail to adversely affect national life.