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 European Divorces While You IVait.

9

EUROPEAN DIVORCES By. J. H. Beale, WHILE Jr. YOU WAIT.

WE are prone to think of our country in the superlative degree. In most par ticulars we believe ourselves to be among the greatest and best on earth; but if we can not bring ourselves to this opinion, then we are sure we are the worst. In respect to our civil service, our municipal govern ment, our faith in high ideals, we are dread fully shocked with ourselves; but chiefly we deplore the laxity of our divorce law. We look with admiration toward the Roman Catholic states of Europe where divorce is unknown, and toward England, which will recognize no divorces but her own. An ex amination of the records, however, affords us the comfort of discovering other sinners besides ourselves. Demand creates supply in the social as in the business world; and as long as the tenth commandment is broken by men who covet their neighbors' wives the divorce mills will not be confined within the western portion of the Louisiana purchase. The same social necessity which puts, Boston alongside no-license Cambridge, to supply her with alcoholic refreshment, gives Austria its Hungary, France its Switzerland and North Germany, and England its Scotland, for the relaxation of galling marital ties. The man who, in the desire for his neigh bor's wife, sets the divorce mill in operation does, it is true, run a risk of injury, in Europe as well as in this country; he must act with circumspection and under competent advice if he would escape a prosecution for adul tery. The Supreme Court of Austria and the French Court of Cassation are as alert as the House of Lords or the Supreme Court of the United States to make affairs unpleas ant for* parties to a fraudulent divorce; as the historiettcs which follow will show. An Austrian gentlemen whom (following the Reporter) we will call B., married a wife; but the venture not proving profitable, their

partnership was dissolved by a judicial separation. The wife, Marie, had, in fact, become enamored of another gentleman, and he of her; and they rightly regarded their case as one calling for the service of counsel learned in the law. "There are two ob stacles," said the learned man, "in the way of your becoming happy; you are both Catholics and both Austrians. Your church and your state both forbid divorce. Are you quite sure, though, you are Catholic?" Marie B. confessed that she felt stirring within her doubts of certain Catholic doc trines, and was leaning towards the Uni tarian faith; while Herr W. was sure that there was a great deal in the Protestant de nial of Papal authority, and on the whole, believed himself a Lutheran. If that were so, all might be easily arranged. In the furthest corner of Hungary, easily acces sible by rail, is a very sensible place called Transylvania; and the chief city, Klausenburg, boasts a Unitarian bishop and a Lutheran one, each with his ecclesiastical court prepared to grant divorces to Hungari ans of his creed. "Take the Orient Express with a first-class ticket for Klausenburg, be received into the churches to which you respectively lean; get adopted by respectable Hungarian burghers, and thus become Hun garian subjects; and your difficulties will disappear." No sooner said than done. On the 28th of September, 1891, Marie arrived in Klaus enburg (locally and euphoniously called Kolosvar) and at once abjured the Catholic religion, and was received into the Unitarian church; and a month later she was legally" adopted by one Joseph F., thereby becoming Hungarian. On the 19th of November the lower ecclesiastical court of the Unitarian Church granted her a divorce from B., and, to make all sure, the Superior Court af