DIVORCE MADE EASY.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10203, 3 April 1911, Page 5

DIVORCE MADE EASY.

&; The Editor.} j Sir, — I did not intend to take the liberty of again trespassing on your space, but as you have asked ine certain questions, I am compelled to write just once moro. I will cheerfully do what so far you yourself have failed to do, and that is, answer plain question?, in a plain way. Question No. 1 asked me is—Do I contend that divorce is, not easier now than it was ten years ago? Willingly I answer that divorce is infinitely harder to obtain now tha'i it was ten years ago. It was on point that we have differed from tl'G outset. I would recommend you to read the New Zealand statutes rein tins to divorce covering the last ten years, and if after doing so you do not agrpo with me, then it will bear entirely out what I at first said —that some peopV j have peculiar views on matrimonii j questions. Then I am asked —Do the I Court records of the Dominion not show an enormous increase in divorce cases? My answer is, No. And I further, and say that since an amendment to the Act (of two or three years ago) the number of cases has materially diminished, and will continue to diminish. I hope these answers are plain and unequivocal. You next ft-'k my "individual" opinion as to severing the marriage tie. Why, pray? You are surely not serving up to me. some subtle flattery. I really must decline to answer, as I reluctantly refuse to believevthat the high compliment in- | volved m your request is deserved. It is, after all. a matter of true religion (at its root), and; really. I am emi ohatically not an authority on religion. Then, again—do I argue that prevention is not better than cure? When? Where? - I recollect that you made some mystifying suggestion about State regulation of "promiscuous" marriages. I merely remarked on the ! utter impossibility of your suggestion, 1 In any case, now is not State regulation of love matters the very pinnacle of grotesqueness? "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing" applied with force to your original article, and the further you have gone in trying to justify your article, the worse the case you have made out in support of it in my humble .opinion. As I have plainly answered your questions—your relevant questions—can I justly ask. in conclusion, that you answer nnlv one query: Which ground of divorce in"Nevy Zealand make" divorce, in] your opinion. too easy ? , This I have ! now asked three times, and as it is i | really the only matter in question .be-, tweeh us; it ought to "bo answered by i ybu, otherwise vorn must be taken to > have capitulated.—l am, etc., J i . G. H. CULLEN. (We are not prepared to further argueri this question with ou,r correspondent, for it is quite evident that he does not regard it" from the point of tiew of either fact or reason. We asked him,-for instance, if the Court records of the Dominion did not show an enormous increase in the number of divorce cases during the last ten years. He replies, "No." If he will look lip page 384 of the Official Year Book of 1910, he will find that there has been an alarming increase during the last ten years—that whereas the number of petitions for divorce in 1900 numbered-110, in j 1909 (the last "year recorded) tliey i had increased to 242. Surely this is I sufficient.—Ed. Age.)