stand the
barbarism of our present laws of divorce.

It is significant that those who talk most of the sanctity of marriage
are the very people who fear most the extension of divorce, seeming to
believe that any loosening of its chains would lead to a dissolution
of the institution of marriage. One marvels at the weakness of faith
shown in such a view. It is not possible to hold the argument both
ways. If the partners in marriage are happy, why lock them in? if not,
why pretend that they are? The best argument I ever heard for divorce
was a remark made to me in a conversation with a working man. He said,
"When two people are fighting it is not very safe to lock the door".
After all, what you do is this: you give occasion for the locks to be
broken.

I have already spoken of loyalty and duty in relation to marriage,
and nothing that I say now must be thought to lessen at all my deep
belief in the personal responsibility of the individual in every
relationship of the sexes. Living together even after the death of
love may, indeed, be right if this is done in the interests of the
children. But it can never be right to compel such action by law. For
then in ninety-nine cases out of every hundred what is regarded as
duty is really a question of expediency. It is very easy to deceive
ourselves. And it requires more courage than most people possess to
face the fact that what has perhaps been a happy and fruitful marriage
has died a slow and bitter death. But the higher morality claims that
a child must be born in love and reared in love, or, at the lowest, in
an atmosphere from which all enmity is absent. Only the parent who is
strong enough to subordinate the individual right to the rights of the
child can safely remain in a marriage without love.

One great advantage of free divorce is that the wife and husband would
not part, as is almost inevitable under present conditions, in hatred,
but in friendship. This would enable them to meet one another from
time to time and unite together in care of any children of the
marriage. If such reasonable conduct was for any reason impossible on
the part of either or both parents, then the State must appoint a
guardian to fill the place of one parent or both. No child should be
brought up without a mother and a father. The adoption of children
under the State might in this way open up fruitful opportunities
whereby childless women and men might gain the joys of parenthood.

This con