orce Law Reform will merely bring our
jurisprudence up to the level of the modern enlightened State. It
involves no revolutionary disturbance of anything but our crusted
ignorance of how modern civilization works outside England. It sets
out to place the family on a firmer basis, to regulate the marriage
contract on equitable lines, and to improve the chances of the
future generation in a country where deserted wives fill the
work-houses and forty thousand illegitimate children are born every
year."

In Germany, which we are always being asked to imitate in non-essentials
by the more stupid kind of Imperialist--the kind which only very strong
empires can survive--the law of divorce is vastly superior to ours.
There is no such thing as judicial separation, which "is rightly
condemned as being contrary to public policy." Further, as Mr. Haynes
points out, "In Germany a male cannot marry under twenty-one or a female
under eighteen, whether parental consent is available or not. In England
a man may and not infrequently does cut his wife and family out of his
will; in Germany the rights of wife and children are properly
safeguarded by limiting this liberty of disposition. In England a father
need not do more for his children than keep them out of the work-house
unless he has brought himself under Divorce Jurisdiction; in Germany he
is obliged to maintain them in a suitable manner. In England a
spendthrift or dipsomaniac can only be controlled when he has spent all
his money. In Germany such persons are protected from themselves by the
family council. In England an illegitimate child can never be
legitimated by the subsequent marriage of the parents. In Germany this
humane and reasonable opportunity of making reparation to the child
exists as a matter of course."

Here in England we have one law for the rich and another for the poor,
for the average cost of a decree is about L100; and a case was recently
reported in which a woman had saved up for twenty years in order to
obtain a divorce. What an absolutely abominable scandal; how hideously
beneath the level of practice amongst what we are pleased to call savage
peoples. As everyone knows, the present law directly encourages
immorality, pronouncing separation _without_ the power of
re-marriage--that is to say, the greater punishment, for lesser
offences, and divorce _with_ the power of re-marriage, that is to say,
the lesser punishmen