ater, or
three years later, if only desired by one of the parties. Dr.
Shufeldt ("Psychopathia Sexualis and Divorce") proposes that a
divorce-court judge should conduct, alone, the hearing of any
cases of marital discord, the husband and wife appearing directly
before him, without counsel, though with their witnesses, if
necessary; should medical experts be required the judge alone
would be empowered to call them.

When we realize that the long delay in the acceptance of so just and
natural a basis of divorce is due to an artificial tension created by the
pressure of the dead hand of Canon law--a tension confined exclusively to
Christendom--we may also realize that with the final disappearance of that
tension the just and natural order in this relationship will spring back
the more swiftly because that relief has been so long delayed. "Nature
abhors a vacuum nowhere more than in a marriage," Ellen Key remarks in the
language of antiquated physical metaphor; the vacuum will somehow be
filled, and if it cannot be filled in a natural and orderly manner it will
be filled in an unnatural and disorderly manner. It is the business of
society to see that no laws stand in the way of the establishment of
natural order.

Reform upon a reasonable basis has been made difficult by the unfortunate
retention of the idea of delinquency. With the traditions of the Canonists
at the back of our heads we have somehow persuaded ourselves that there
cannot be a divorce unless there is a delinquent, a real serious
delinquent who, if he had his deserts, would be imprisoned and consigned
to infamy. But in the marriage relationship, as in all other
relationships, it is only in a very small number of cases that one party
stands towards the other as a criminal, even a defendant. This is often
obvious in the early stages of conjugal alienation. But it remains true in
the end. The wife commits adultery and the husband as a matter of course
assumes the position of plaintiff. But we do not inquire how it is that he
has not so won her love that her adultery is out of the question; such
inquiry might lead to the conclusion that the real defendant is the
husband. And similarly when the husband is accused of brutal cruelty the
law takes no heed to inquire whether in the infliction of less brutal but
not less poignant wounds, the wife also should not be made defendant.
There are a few cases, but only a few, in which the relation