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THE HONG KONG DAILY PRESS, FRIDAY, OCTOBER 7th, 1927.

MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE IN RUSSIA.

SOME REMARKABLE. FIGURES.

THE BREAKING, OF FAMILY

TIES.

SOCIAL CHAOS.

Russia has forsaken the Family, and is now facing the gravest crisis in ita qtreer, says a writer who has studied court records and ungɔver. ed some Estounding facts in con nection with Russia's experiment in changing by fias a moral order that many claim to he of divine origin, and most ndarit to be the only safe, one for civilization. Russin. writes Hubert Malkus in Sulers Magazine, his danced wildly to the tune of free love, and has now begun to pay the Addier. It is a terrible price, to judge from what we now read. The sum and substance of his findings are that the new marriage and divorce laws, under which a boy and girl may marry on Monday and be divorced on Tuesday, in less time than it takes to buy a rail. road ticket from New York to Chicago, have resulted in the de sertion of thousands of wives and the abandonment of thousands of nameless children, to be added to the hordes of children which the. Revolution orphaned and left to starve. According to Mr. Malkus, last year 100,000 wives were aban- doned and appealed to the Soviet courts to find their husbands and compel then to contribute to the support of their children. In ad dition, 90,000 women brought suit the denied against men who paternity of their offspring. And 15,000 wives asked "support for de pendent children. These, we are told, are the authenticated Agüres of Soviet records. The number of unrecordeu cases, says Mr. Malkas, can only be nurmised.

"

In Russia to-day; he goes on, it is the law that marriage ends when love cools. And love, it appears from the dockets of the Russian marriage courts, cools quickly." He describes the Reasian inethed of marriage and divorce:

If a man and woman wish to marry, the wish is sufficient to legalize the union. If the newly wedded pair desire to record the marriage, they can do so, but it is not obligatory. It is helpful. however, particularly if a divorce is anticipated. If the marriage is not registered it may be neres sary at some time to call witnesser to prove that the couple had lived

ogether as man and wife.

Grounds for divorce is simply the desire of the couple to be divorced. If the marriage has been registered, all that is neces- sary is to appear before the re- gistrar and advise him that a divorce has been agreed upon. He enters it in his book and the couple go their separate ways," If there are dependent children, each parent must contribute a third of his income to their sup port. That is the only restraint upen divorce in Russia, aud, curiously, it is an economic bar rier, not a moral one.

"This simplification of the marriage law has been aliortive in its practical reality. Coaside: what this effort to free the sexes has done. It has reduced marriage to an agreement to live together only as long as it suits the fancy of the parties thereto. The handicap of the children and the obligation to support them Eomething else again. But how a country police husbands who evade their responsibilities by hundreds of thousands? The situation is further, complicated because in thousands of cases it is difficult or impossible to establish paternity or the consent of the ma to be the husband of the woman be has lived with when there has been no registration of the marriage. ·

can

"Consider the marringe situa- tion as it exists in Russia to-day. It is literally possible to marry A girl on Monday and divorce "her on Tuesday; no question of alimony is involved, except when there are dependent children. And what is the result of this freedom! There is an appalling number of these casual week-end marriages.

From such unions, obviously, have come the suits of the 100,000. abandoned wives, and the 90,000 women who could not find a man to hcknowledge pater- nity of their child: In these nearly 200,000 cases, the men,did not avail themselves of the divorce courts. They simply walked off. The 18,000 who apparently did go through the formality of getting a divorce evaded the responsibi- lity of contributing to the sup- port of their children."

The Soviet Russian Irm of Com- munism, as Mr. Malkus explains it, has no place for the family. Men and women, except for wome

HISTORY AND

TRUTH..

AT

THE

concession to biological facts that MARSHAL FOCH'S MEMOIR3.

not even Comatinism can ignore, have equal rights and obligations. A husband is not required to sup- port his wife, and is only jointly responsible for the "support of the children. The woman is expected to provide. Little value is placed on her work in the home; she must be a worker outside the home. To go on:

WHO WON THE BATTLE OF

THE MARNE?

ין:

Marshal Foch has taken a courag highly creditable to him, writes a Home paper.. He is generally understood to have little private means and the Franch Govera This breaking up of family ment does not err on the side of ties. under the Soviet theory of ideal relations between the sexes, prodigality in rewarding its great frees the woman from economic saldiets,, "The Marshal, whose will slavery. It wipes out her status moved several millions of men in in the bourgeois family life ns chattel of the man.' It makes the the crisis of Europe's fate, is liv only bond between Eusband and ing on a aum which would scarce wife one of mutual nfection andy satisfy a first-class" Civil Ser- a decent feeling of responsibility. That is the theory in a nutshell.

But the fact is something else entirely. The idealistic laws as outlined, filled, it seems at least, to give freedam to 208,000 women list year. On the con- trary, these same women were burdened with small children and abandened to starve. By such a costly process is family fe being broken up. As a means of mak-being wriften, though they are not ing workers out of women, how-

vant in retirement in England. When, therefore, we read that Foch has been offered a fortune for his memoirs, and has refused it, we cannot pay too high a tribute to his magnanimity and disinterested- ness

The memoirs, nevertheless, are

ever, it has certain virtues. The to be published during the author's abandoned women will be forced lifetime. Foch is re-chewing " to work to support themselves his manuscript, correcting and re and their offspring. The marri- age laws have accomplished this much: That the have freed woman from man's domination is not so clearly apparent.

correcting; and thinks he is al- ways, getting nearer and nearer to the truth. This observation-is ia, Any one who has made the itself a somewhat acid commentary. most casual examination of the on the innumerable volumes which statements of the Soviet leaders have appeared on the great trans: can reach no conclusion, except. that which is forced on him actions with which Foch was so that the aim is the definite de closely concerned. If he finds the struction of the family, and that truth so evasive, what estimate are the method is to make family life we to take of the success of others difficult through economic organi who cannot have had a tithe of bis zation, to destroy the recognized opportunities for observation and safeguards of the farails, and to judgment The Marshal, indeed. stifle the ambitions that have made is definitely satirical concerning the family the impelling force the way in which bistory is writ in all progress as far back as the

ten. Today, he says every- memory of man goes."

body seems to have won the battle They are, as Mr. Malkus quotes of the Marne-all except Joffre." from one of Lenin's tracts, re- From which we may assume that

last foundation moving the

of he, at any rate, does not share the bourgeois marriage, with its pri- exceedingly low opinion of the first vileges, its namow family interests, French Commander-in-Chief which its isolation and its patriarchal has been adopted by so many Emitations." Madaine Alexandra writers. Kollantay, now Soviet Ambassador to Mexico, speaks in the same general tenor. Mr. Malkus quotes from her address before the Third Communist Congress, that there can family and must be no such thing

But are the "twelve good-sized bocks" which the Marshal himself threatens likely to justify the pains. he is lavishing on them? They may be accurate. Will they be true i Can there be such A in the Communistic society. For thing as n true history 1 We all know Walpole's view of the sub- Communistic society as a whole," she says, represents such for ject. He was lamenting that his tress of collective life, precluding life-long preoccupation with busi any possibility of the existence of ness had deprived him after his an isolated class of family bodies, downfall of the taste for literature existing by itself with its ties of which to many men in such cir- birth, with its female egoism, with cumstances was an effective solace. its love of family, honour and its Works of the imagination made no absolute segregation." The result, appeal to him. Why not read as seen by the writer, is chans. On history suggested A friend. top of this is the army of homeless History exclaimed the cynical wails, estimated at 4,000,000, old statesman, "that cannot be coaming about Russia, beyond all true." He, who had made it, knew control. Some effort to place a few that the utmost saturation in docu of these waif in institutions has ments, even it combined with real been made, but without effect, and talent and perspicacity, can only Sr. Malkus tells us of the bung reach a certain approximation in Fling of the Soviet in meeting this the truth. "

grave menace";

In fact, we have only to go into "One State institution for the the nearest police court, and listen care of the homieless children re- to the evidence concerning the pet- ceived 287 children in a space oftiest case, to appreciate how diff three months, and 270 of them cult, deliberate deception apart, at тап away again almost im is to arrive at a completely just · mediately. Ia another 'home' in conclusion concerning any trans- Moscow, with a capacity for 125 action. When the transaction is on inmates, there were only seventy the enormous scale of the tirent five children and there were forty-War, the difficulty is such as to

ve attendants caring for them In all Russia, in 1925, with several million homeless children, the capacity of the State bomes was only 290,000.

...

Or

at

defeat the most powerful under- standing. No witness can divest himself of prejudice. No one mind can grasp the multitude of facts, and place them in precisely their "The Government has given up proper relation to each other. "in despair. The State homes have Even given complete intellectual been abandoned gradually as in- integrity and that is a large as

French historian capable of meeting the situation. sumption-the It ought to be significant that the must necessarily see things differ- Government bas turned to the ently from the English, Belgian, American, to say peasants, who still have a decent Russian, regard for family life, to care for nothing of the German, Austrian, the unruly little waifs. Mean or Turkish chronicler. The politi time, illogically, having failed to cian will think in terme establish the State a capable of variance with, and sometimes an- supporting or training its chil tagonistic to, the soldier, and vice dren, and having turned to the versa. Among soldiers, again, the peasant families for help, the regimental history will differ from. Soviet leaders, by removing all that of the Division, that of the restraints on MATTÄAge and Division from that of the Army divorce, add daily to their woes. Corps, and that of the Army Corps Who is going to care for the from that of the Army. Fock may children of the 208000 women usefully expose errors. Even be whose husbands have deserted cannot yield absolute truth. them? The mothers can not do this, because they must work to live, and the State has proved - incapable."

Can a State exist which sweeps away the fundamentals of social life asks Mr. Malkus. He tells us:

"The Boriet theorists say yes; the records of the Soviet mar- riage couria show social chaos. The theorists, who make the laws of Russia, hold that marriage is based on love ́alóne, and dissolves automatically when love dies. The experience of nations that have survived through centuries and achieved greatness is some- thing else. It is the knowledge that marriage is the solemnizing of the inumly function; it is nei- ther to be lightly assumed nor lightly, shed. It is bigger than individual. It exists for the safety and the progress of the world. It is as old as civilization itself."

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