/1.7:)1< 317/ 

THE QUEEN'S WORK 

3742 West Pine Blvd. 

St. Louis, Mo. 





DIVORCE 
cA Picture From the Headlines 

By 

DANIEL A. LORD, S. J . 

• 

THE QUEEN'S WORK 

3742 W. Pine Blvd. 

St. Louis, Mo. 



Imprimi potest: 

Peter Brooks, S. J. 

Praep. Provo Missourianae 

N ihil obstat: 

M. J. Bresnahan 

Censor Librorum 

Imprimatur: 

>f< ]oannes ]. Glennon 

Archiepiscopus Sti. Ludovici 

Sti. Ludovici, die 10 r\prilis 1\)..2 

Second printing, August 1943 

. ANY FINANCIAL PROFIT made by 

the Centml Office of the Sodality 

will be used f01' the advancement 

of the Sodality Movement and the 

cause of Catholic Actioll. 

Copyright 194:3 

THE QUEEN'S WORK, Inc. 



DIVORCE 

A Picture From the Headlines 

T HIS is a study of divorce as you find it in the daily papers. 
Perhaps a correct title for it might be: 

"Divorce in the Headlines." For the study 

is made right out of the daily sheets that 

anyone can pick up and read. In fact most 

people do read them. 

I am using real names, the names of 

divorced people who made headlines when 

they terminated their marriages. In the 
cases of the "unknowns," the people whose 

divorces were somewhat private or matter 

for little public notice, I am suppressing 

names. 

Any newspaper reader will remember the 

divorces of the people whom I name. They 

were subjects for the reporters, the news 

photographers, the commentators. The 

others are perhaps entitled to obscurity. 

At least I shall act as though they were. 

Let's go back to the letter which about 

two years ago made me think seriously 
about what divorce was doing to America. 

It came from a friend in the southwest. 

The Letter That Primed Me 

"Dear Father: You should have been in 
my house yesterday when the pretty little 

fifteen-year-old bride who lives next door 

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told her mother she was going to divorce 

the boy she had married a month ago in 

order to marry someone else. 

"Her mother and father were there, 

heartbroken. They were speaking to each 

other for the first time since their own 

divorce, eight years ago. 

"The mother begged her daughter to 

stay with her young husband, at least until 

she had finished high school. The girl looked 

at her calmly and said, 'But, mother, I'm 

merely doing what you did. Only I am 

doing it before there are two children to 

pay for my mistakes'." 

Clippings 

I had of course, like all priests, run into 

this sort of case before. Divorce is too 

common not to be thrusting itself constantly 

upon my attention. But this particular 

incident set me to thinking. And my think-

ing set me to clipping items about divorce 

that I noticed in the daily papers. I chucked 

them into the top drawer of my desk until 

the thing was bulging. It was a drawer full 

of tragedy and ugliness, of human failure 

and sadness, of twisted humor and a ghastly 

brand of comedy. 

Then one day I got the clippings out 

and grouped them. You are getting the 

resultant of what I had gathered. Probably 

you won't much like it. We don't enjoy 

facing national calamities. And divorce is 

such a calamity, doleful and terrifying. It 

is national tragedy on a large scale. If it 

were not sad, it would often be hilarious. 

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But here it is, often just as I read it in 

the cold type. It is a summary of divorce 

and the grim joke it has played on our 

country. 

To Start With . .. 

I ruffled through my clippings to start 

off significantly. Half a hundred incidents 

offered themselves. 

Here is a newspaper picture that ter-

minated a marital battle in the Chicago 

courts. The young couple had won their 

divorce. Then they started to fight all over 

again. Which one of them was going to 

retain the wedding picture? The divorce-

court judge, ever obliging, took the role of 

Solomon; and while the cameras clicked 

and the exhusband and exwife smiled 

broadly, he cut the pictured bride from the 

pictured groom, severing the bridal picture 

as he had legally severed the marriage. 

Cute, eh? 

Here's a clipping from Time. The 

divorced wife of General MacArthur is 

being tormented by Americans demanding 

to know why she divorced the hero of the 

Philippines. 

Here's a big clipping about Dorothy 

Thompson and Sinclair Lewis. After solv-

ing all the major problems of the nations 

in their columns and novels, they steer their 

own marriage onto the rocks, while their 

child, Michael Lewis, is tossed about 

between them. 

You might even wonder whether to laugh 

or to cry over this brief clipping, also from 

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Time. It is headed, "Mother's Helper." 
"In St. Joseph, Mo., a child applied for a 

marriage license, explaining, 'I want it for 

mother and the fellow she's going to 

marry'." Funny? or sickening? 

An Old Argument 

Or I might begin conservatively. I might 

refer to the old argument I met when first 

I tackled Catholic ethics. If once divorce 

is granted for any cause at all, the argu-

ment ran, then the floodgates are loosed, or, 

to shift the figure, all marriage is imperiled. 

People will rush carelessly into marriage if 
they know it will be easy to rush out again. 

They won't make the effort necessary to 

bring marriage to success. If at first mar-

riages are allowed to be broken up for 

serious reasons, in no time at all such 

breaks will be permitted for the most 

frivolous, trivial, and absurd reasons. It is 
not easy to make a success of marriage. It 

is a snap to make a failure of it. It is the 
most natural thing in the world for a man 

to throw over the old love for a new one, 

the old, tired wife for the young girl who 

makes his heart flutter. It is easy to under-

stand the boredom that makes a woman 
regard her husband with weariness and 

smile upon some flatterer. Summed up, 

diyorce, once started, will grow into an 

overwhelming evil. One divorce opens the 

way to a million divorces. One excuse lays 
the ground plan for a thousand unimpor-

tant pretexts. 

When I first met the argument, I treated 

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it with polite respect. Maybe yes ... maybe 

no. Now the newspaper headlines before 

me prove how tragically true that argu-

ment was and is. In fact the argument 

understated the actual results in American 
society. 

Says Dorothy Dix 

We might take a text from Dorothy Dix, 

who probably has handled more problems 
of love, marriage, and divorce than has 

any other woman that ever lived. Here's 

what she thinks: 

"At the bottom of nine tenths of the 

divorces is the superstitious belief ... that 
there is some magic in a decree absolute 

that .will restore youth and beauty and 

make the [divorced people] ... lighthearted 

boys and girls again. Most husbands and 
wives who break up their homes do not do 

it because of intolerable wrongs .... They 

do it because they are bored with each 

other; because they are fed up on the dull 
round of domesticity; because they are sick 

and tired of listening · to the children's 

noise and fights; but mainly because they 

have begun to have a nostalgia for the days 

when they were sweet-and-twenty . ... 

"They fool themselves into thinking that 
if they could break that tie that binds them 

. .. some miracle would make their paunchy 

figures· grow slim, cause wavy locks to 

appear on those bald spots, and restore their 

complexions. They would be automatically 

infused with new pep, and the come-

hither look wQuld return to their tired eyes. 

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Of course no such transformation takes 

place. 

"Of all disillusioning human experiences, 

divorce is the worst. For it rarely brings 

to its participants the happiness they had 

hoped to get. It is only the most callous 

who can feast and make merry amidst the 

wreck of the home they have pulled down; 

and deaf indeed must be the ears that can 

shut out the sound of little children's 
weeping in the night for the father or the 

mother they have lost." 

Wise woman, Miss Dix. Her experience 

speaks solemn, frightening warning. 

And Also . .. 

Divorce is a national expense. We note 

the clipping that states that a Colorado 

scientist has calculated that every, domestic 

squabble brought into the courts costs the 

fighters $227. That would buy a lot of 

schooling for one of the children. 

Or there's Max Miller's article on "Reno," 

reprinted in The Reader's Digest. Reno, 
Miller explains, always refers to its divorce 

racket as "The One Thing." But usually it 

doesn't refer to it at all. It leaves that for 
the stranger, the castoff wife, the sporting 

husband, the "gold digger" who is turning 

her marriage into money, the disillusioned 
husband whose wife is yearning for a 

younger man. 

"Other states," Miller continues, "tried 

to steal the divorce trade, ' but Reno had 
twenty years' start, and its judges are 

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'educated.' A New York lawyer can long-

distance a reputable lawyer in Reno and 

ask outright, after stating the case, ' if the 

divorce will be granted; and the Reno 

lawyer can answer immediately yes or no. 

He knows exactly how the Reno judges 

will react. 

"The 10 old~st law firms in Reno, tied 
in with the big eastern firms, have more 

than 90 per cent of the entire trade. The 

average fee is $250, but clients 'are charged 

in proportion to their wealth. 

"Nine out of ten women who come to 

Reno do not want what they are sent to 

get. That is why so many of these castoff 

wives make such helpless fools of them-

selves." 

And he describes their follies in sicken-

ing detail. 

But, Reno goes its merry way with the 

full sanction of American law. And the 

columnists note on their fingers this star 

and that socialite and that prominent per-

son who are being "Reno-vated." 

Failures 

Also in The Reader's Digest is an article 

on "Genius," by Bruce Bliven. All of us 

have an inner conscioul?ness that a divorce 

is a sad confession of failure. A man and 

a woman just haven't succeeded in making 

a go of their most important career. They 

are walking out on a job . 

. Mr. Bliven however puts the case posi-

tively: "[Geniuses] ... marry early, get 

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divorces less frequently .... Their divorce 

rate is only one third as high [as those of 

lesser mentality] ... indications of suc-

cessful living." 

It amazes me that we Americans, who 

are utterly intolerant of failure in any 
form, are yet blandly patient with the gross 

failure our Americans are making of the 

essential career of marriage, homemaking, 

and parenthood. 

The Divorce Racket 

The splash announcement on the cover 
of a cheap magazine struck my eye. It was 

Flash for May, 1941. I picked up the mag-

azine and clipped the leading article. For 

one hundred dollars, it seems, a man and 

his wife can fake all the evidence needed 

to get them a divorce in New York State. 
The article was explicitly illustrated, a 
complete object lesson (whatever may have 

been the editors' intent) that could be fol-
lowed by any man and wife who were tired 

of each other and sighing for new loves. 

"Divorce racketeers," declared the arti-

cle, "will guarantee to provide persons with 

a divorce if they commit what amounts to 

compulsory adultery and resort as well to 
perjury .... Divorce-court judges are well 

aware of this state of affairs but are power-
less to take any action." 

The Startling Record 

Once you start divorce, who's going to 
stop it? 

Once husbands and wives begin to rush 

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to the judge to have him cut their mar-

riage in half instead of themselves trying 

to solve their problems, what's the end? 

The following is not headline news, just 

dull statistics. But they are numbers click-

ing off our national tragedies. 

The United States Government gives the 

following data: 

In 1897 there were 8.8 marriages and 

0.5 divorces for every thousand people. 

By 1937 the figure for that number of 

people had jumped to 11 marriages and 

1.9 divorces. 

The marriages ha<i increased less than 

25 per cent. The divorces had leaped 

almost 300 per cent. 

In 1890 there were 33,919 American 
divorces. 

In 1937 there were upward of 250,000 
divorces. . . 

The American Magazine for October, 
1941, has these amazing figures: 

In 1900 there were 8 divorces for every 

100 marriages. 

In 1940 there were 18 divorces for every 

100 marriages. 

Divorces or Divorcees? 

Statistics are always tricky, and in all 

honesty we must notice the difference be-

tween divorces and divorcees. What I have 

given is the number and proportion of 

divorces. I cannot find any record of the 

actual number of people who divorce and 

marry again. 



As a matter of fact one person is likely 

to get a divorce, not once, but three or four 

times. ~ -So that while the majority of sober, 

honorable Americans continue to lead their 

normal married lives happily and with 

dignity, these people who rush into and 

out of marriage are the on~§ responsible 

for the statistics' looking so bad. 

Then too after divorce some good people 

feel themselves bound by the law of Christ 

and of nature and do not remarry. The fact 

that their divorced partners do remarry 

keeps the level tragically high. 

Yet whether we take~ the actual number 

of divorces or the number of. people being 

divorced, the facts are '~ still '"terrifying and 

t4~story of broken marriages one of the 
ugliest in American life. 

Dashin g In 

No man in his right mind believes that a 

man and a woman can take one swift look 

at each other and feel Cupid's arrow bing-

ing them in the left pulmonary, dash off to 

wake up a sleepy-eyed justice of the peace, 

pledge lifelong vows in alcoholic voices-

and mean anything by it. 

But since the matter of getting a divorce 

is very simple, as we shall see, my head-

lines show that that is exactly what thou-

sands of moderns are doing. They spend 

less time picking a partner for marriage 

than they ~ spend picking a horse in the 

third at Pl~lico. 
Here is a newspaper case of , a girl 

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thirteen years old and a boy fourteen years 

old traveling fifty-six miles on a bike in the 

hope of obtaining an easy marriage. They 

were quite indignant when the police 

brought them back. . Youngsters see; young-

sters do. 

Here's a posed picture of a Kansas City 

night-club singer who is starting· divorce 

proceedings against a man whom, she ad-

mits, she married after a few hours' 

acquaintance and a few drinks. The man 

bragged that the marriage meant nothing 

to him; he'd been drunk when it took place. 

So their marriage had lasted the sum total 

of twelve days. Then a benign judge 

called the whole thing off. I wonder if they 

would have rushed into marriage like that 

if they hadn't known that in order to break 

up that marriage all they would need to do 

would be to take a casual stroll into a 

divorce court. 

This news clipping reads: "[ So-and-so, 1 
.. . veteran actress, married [Whosisl ... 

in a chartered air liner as it flew over Las 

Vegas." 

Maybe the two involved had known each 

other for thirty of the thirty-seven years 

to which they confessed. Maybe the plan 

was just a syr.nbol of crazy speed. 

This clipping refers to the woman as a 

socialite. She married a Hits-been actor 

recently let out of an unsuc·cessful mar-

riage. They were married "during an auto-

mobile ride that ended with a marriage on 

borrowed money and with a blue wooden 

wedding ring." All the high dignity of a 

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solemn contract is certainly preserved most 

meticulously in this case. Or am I wrong? 

This daughter of a famous musical family 

"eloped to Reno with Private [Whatshis-

name] .... She had divorced her husband 

last year, and she soon was parted from 

her present groom, who was tossed into the 

guardhouse for being AWOL." Evidently 

the Army is not so considerate toward 

soldiers who make swift fools of themselves 

as were the parents of the girl. 

No wonder that throughout the headlines 

I found recurrent hints of legislation to 

to make swift marriages and bargain-

counter divorces more and more difficult. 

Can it be that someday we will have the 

states requiring something very like the 

banns required in the Catholic Church?· 
Maybe we are all thinking with a little 

dread of the easy-come, easy-go attitude 
toward modern marriage. 

How Often? 

The frequency with which people dash 

into and out of marriage leaves the reader 

a little dizzy. 

Here's a man listed as the Hamburger 
King. He divorced his fourth wife, whom 
he had married on the day after he divorced 

his third wife. 

Walter Winchell notes that a famous 
male singer and his fourth wife "are being 

adult about it." Correct. Children would 

have better sense and morals. 

A woman listed as "the wealthy Lucy 

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Cotton Thomas Ament Hann Magrew" is 

being married for the second time to her 

fifth husband. 

An opera singer gets a publicity break 

when she is photoed as she returns from 

her divorce from her fourth husband. 

Just to show you that it isn't always the 

moneyed folk. . . . here's a Los Angeles 

policeman divorcing his fifth wife, while 

that wife regretfully confesses that the 

divorce is only her fourth. 

What You Can Do With Money 

Then there is this big handful of clip-

pings about Tommy Manville, usually re-

ferred to as the asbestos heir-clippings 

that only go to show you what you can do 

with marriage and divorce in this country 

if you have the money to spread around. 

He divorces his fifth wife. His fourth wife 

jumps into the limelight to contest his title 

to greatness as she announces her own new 

marriage, though she has been married 

again and divorced again in the interval 

since she left Manville. Then here's the 

death notice of Manville's mother. She 

divorced the young man's father way back 

in 1909. Her son had at least precedent 

for his actions. 

One society woman is photographed 

proudly holding the hand of husband num-

ber five. Another leaves the divorce court 

accompanied by reporters; it is her fourth 

divorce. "I'm going to get married right 

away. I just love marriage," she pro-

claims, while the flashbulbs pop. 

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This particular man forgot the technicali-

ties of the game. He married two wives 

simultaneously instead of successively. Up 

to that time he had done pretty well, with 

a record of seven successive marriages and 

divorces. 

In the book "Boy and Girl Tramps of the 

Road" a Chicago University research author 

told how many of the child ' derelicts were 

the offspring of divorced parents. He listed 

the number of times some of the parents 

had been married - seven, nine, eleven 

times. His all-time high however was the 

mother who was known to have been 

divorced twenty-three times. 

That is what can happen right here in 

America. 

And to the Same Person 

Talk about the man caught in the revolv-

ing door! Are you aware of the way that 

people rush in and out of marriage with 

the same person? It's a kind of childish 

performance, a sort of now-we're-married-

and-now-we're-not affair. And it is fairly 

common. 

Here's an account of a singer who 

divorced her husband and then remarried 

him five days later. 

Here's a Chicago couple who had been 

divorced three times and each time had 

promptly married each other again. 

Here's a fairly common case: a woman 

getting her second divorce from the same 

man. 

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But sometimes the story of crazy inde-

cision gets a twist. This woman has 

divorced the same husband twice. She 

visits a fortuneteller who warns her that 

she will marry a blond. "Well," she sighs, 

resignedly, "I suppose that's my former 

husband once more. He's the only blond 

I know!" Fate! And fatuous! 

All Set for the Next 

One thing that rather knocks a conserva-

tive between the eyes is the calm way in 

which the next marriage is all arranged 

before the last one has been legally ter-

minated. 

A Broadway columnist quotes a sad little 

remark he overheard in a night club: "I've 

got her consent and her father's, but thus 

far I haven't been able to get my wife's." 

The theatrical-or at least the highly 

publicized motion-picture world -special-

izes in this overlapping of marriages. The 

columnists and the gossip writers are al-

ways marrying off the married actors and 

actresses, while according to the supposed 

laws of the land they are still much mar-

ried to an alive, if not kicking, partner. 

And no one seems to think it nauseating. 

Thus Sheilah Grahame announces, as of 

June 25, 1941, from Hollywood: "Joan 

Perry will shortly marry the big · boss of .a 

big studio whose wife is now in Reno get-

ting the divorce." Do we send the lucky 

girl flowers? And what are we tb ·,:send 

the still extant wife? 

- ]7 -



International News Service gets a quiver 

when "Alice Duckworth, daughter of the 
socially prominent John Hays Hammond, 

admitted today that she and the orchestra 

leader Benny Goodman plan to marry as 

soon as she can obtain a divorce. To speed 
the severance of her matrimonial ties ... 

the socialite is considering heading for 

Reno." 

"If we were only free," sighed Lana 

Turner and Tony Martin to Sheilah Gra-
hame, "we would wed." Regrettably there 

was at the time some silly technicality that 

still bound Lana to Artie Shaw and Tony 

to Alice Faye. But time remedies all things, 

even inconvenient ties. 

Beverly Paterno is bracketed in brief 
fame with Tommy Manville as his next-in-

order. Her lawyer scoffs for the news-

papers: "Why she's not even divorced yet, 

and that will take plenty of time." Ah, 

thne! time! bane of lawyers and of lovers! 

In and Out and Round About 

Louella Parsons makes her column purr 

when she announces that Peggy Ann Kent 
and Don Wilson, radi!) announcer, "will 

march to the altar." (I kept wondering 

where these divorced .couples find all the 

altars they march to; usually in the city 

hall apparently, where altars must be some-
what of an anomaly.) 

"Peggy," gushes Louella, "who came to 

Hollywood after her divorce, confirmed the 

report today : 'Yes; it's true Don and I will 

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marry when he gets his final divorce decree. 
I have never been so happy'." 

But then a sour note is struck. She is 

asked what she thinks her father will say 

about her marital cavortings. 

" 'Dad and I haven't been very close of 

late,' she replied. 'He didn't approve of 

my marriage to or divorce from Ern West-

more'." (That's the husband just rejected.) 

Juoging from the way she disapproved 

of that same husband, dad's first verdict 

must have had some basis in reason. 

This in-and-out-of-matrimony can have 

its financial side. Time's comment on the 
death of Phil Plant, "who until seven years 

ago lived in the gossip columnists' show-
cases," is instructive. "Tycoon Plant left 

[to his son, Phil] $15,000,000. Divorce 

from Cinemactress Constance Bennett cost 

him a $1,000,000 settlement, divorce from 

Big Game Huntress Edna Dunham a fifth 

as much, an auto crash with Showgirl 

Helene Jesmer $75,000. His third wife 

survives as his widow." 

Hollywood 

It is certainly beating the gong to an-

nounce the obvious when we link divorces 
with Hollywood. The fact of the divorces 

is national news. The publicity is amaz-
ingly enough still considered good business. 

Now this is not intended to be an attack 
on the theatrical world. I should be the 

first to acknowledge actors' and actresses' 

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great temptations and the instability of 

their home life, which is not conducive to 

durable marriage. 

What I intend to indicate rather is the 

facility for divorce that is granted under 

the American system at present. If the 

actors and actresses are dragged in as 

pointed illustrations, that is because they 

are in the spotlight and serve so aptly to 

illustrate the conditions surrounding di-

vorce. Their divorces are the most highly 

publicized. Almost anyone else who wishes 

to profit by the facility for bargain-counter 

marriages and divorces does so - though 

without the newspaper space and the can-

did and posed pictures accorded Hollywood 

divorces. 

"In Divorce Town" 

Film Correspondent John Truesdell 

frankly heads his column one day, "In 

Divorce Town." 

"Hollywood," he writes, in explanation, 

"is the divorce capital, where a second 

wedding anniversary is celebrated like a 

Notre Dame victory." 

Is there in that statement the implica-

tion that the divorces which dot motion-

picture careers are almost as frequent as 

the victories of the conquering Irish? 

Jimmie Fidler makes a comfortable liv-

ing out of the marital hits and strike-outs 
of movietown. . 

"Hollywood stars," he says, "whose mar-

riages survive five years should be awarded 

service stripes." 

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Walter Winchell supplements and ex-

plains: "Love seems to be great for the 

films but not for the film people. They're 

so interested in their own careers, they 

haven't the time and energy to make a 

success of another career-marriage." 

In passing, be it noted that almost any 

considerate and sympathetic judge will 

release from marriage a star, male or 

female, who finds that matrimony inter-

feres with his or her work before the 

cameras . . . or back of a saxophone . 

or on the nether side of the footlights ... 

or as half of a dance team. 

But Walter Winchell finds it news when 

Nancy Kelly is "reported near a breakdown 

because of her divorce plans." Most of 

them seem to celebrate with toasts and 

parties. 

Low Comedy 

What a lot of fun you ca~ have playing 

tag in and out of American courts was 

illustrated by a minor comedienne named 

Judy Canova. She rushed to Hawaii for 

a holiday, and while she was there she 

married a young corporal whom apparently 

she had just met. She got a great burst 

of publicity for that . . . though no per-

ceptible improvement in her acting ability 

or film roles. Hardly a month later she 

was back in the States and dashing into 

court again-for a divorce. More pic;tures, 

more publicity. 

Yet one of the columnists notes: "She is 

supposed to be so ashamed of her recent 

~- 21 --



Honolulu elopement and quick verdict to 

dump it that she won't even discuss it with 

her chums." 

She talked it all over with a judge 

though, and he knew just how she felt and 
sent her off with her marriage washed right 

off her hands. 

Mad Merry.Go-Round 

The merry-go-round of Hollywood mar-

riage is too crazy for a normal man to 

ride. Comedians like Mischa Auer remarry 

on the day after their divorce decrees 
become final. Heather Angel is divorced 

from Ralph Forbes, who has been divorced 

from Ruth Chatterton. Helen Vinson 

divorces Fred Perry because he interrupted 
her sleep by yelling and slamming doors. 

Gail Patrick's husband causes her great-- -
and divorce-productive - mental anguish. 

(They had been married in the slot-machine 

and dance-hall environs of Tijuana.) 

Penny Singleton is the devoted wife, 
Blondie, on the screen; in real life she 

divorces and marries again. Lana Turner's 

marriage to Artie Shaw lasts four and a 

half months. Brenda Marshall terminates 

a marriage with Richard Gaines and mar-
ries William Holden. Charles Chaplin, of 

the older school, for a time keeps his mar-

riages and divorces a titillating secret and 

then "conforms" with his last marriage, 

the pictures and headlines vying with war 

news. The whole study becomes involved 

news. The whole studio becomes involved 

when Gloria Dickson, actress, divorces Perc 

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Westmore, makeup expert, and marries 

Ralph Murphy, director. What? no stage-

hands? 

The marriages and divorces of Alice 

Faye rate an organ recital of "Hearts and 

Flowers." She divorces Tony Martin and 
marries Phil Harris south of the Rio 

Grande. But the Mexican wedding is not 

satisfactory to stuffy old Uncle Sam, who 
is unexpectedly the spoilsport. A columnist 

finds the fair A1ice (once a Catholic) look-
ing around for a church in which to rewed 

the recently divorced Harris. Another 

film correspondent, named Othman, sighs, 
ah so gently: "Yesterday we called on an 

actress named Alice Faye, who's in love 

with her husband. In two more months the 

law will let her live with him." And we 

can all smile once more on Uncle Sam, the 

old meanie! 

And On and On 

Anne Shirley and John Payne, briefly 
known as the perfect couple (there is 

usually one a year-for about a year), 

head for separation. Ann Sothern and 
Roger Pryor call theirs a "trial separation." 

Priscilla Lane is said to have "called it a 

day-after a day." 

Liberty writes up the brave renunciation 
by which Joe Schenck bids farewell to h}s 

wife, Norma Talmadge, in words that fairly 

drip with emotion. Norma marries Geor~e 
J essel. That soon melts. And George 

marries, to the amusement of the corre-

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spondents, a youngster who should have 
been in high school. Even Judy Garland 

accepts as her first mate the shopworn 

husband of Martha Raye-and soon joins 

the army of the divorced. 

Occasionally you find a minor wail rising 
from Hollywood. The film .· wI-iter Ann 

Marsters reports that "Bette Davis and 

other screen stars- lament Hollywood's per-
sistence in challengiilg the divorce-hating 

people of the nation with an unbroken 

series of phony marriages, rapid-fire break-
ups, and a cavorting of jniblicity-mad 

youngsters." 

How conv~nient -if the blame could all 
be put onthe~p.deriings! · But it's right in 
thebig-m·op.ey ' bracket · tIiat divorce .· in 

Hollywood is a matter of. course. Bjzii 
Crosby, faithful to one wife, and · D·on 

Ameche, with only one marriage, are the 
startling exceptions. 

Big Names 

It is not however the divorces them-
selves that are so important. The impor-

tance lies in the fact that under the Ameri-

can divorce system all the mal'~iages aIld 
all the divorces are quite legal. . With the 
present arrangements nothing could be done 

to stop them. Our laws Positively encourage 
the maddest of the mad things which Holly-

wood does to marriage. 

Then comes the · long list _ of the "big 

names" across the- cou~try. 

-24~ 



Former Mayor Walker 

breaks up a first marriage. 

for whom he broke it up 
second marriage. 

of New York 
Then the girl 

breaks up his 

Katharine Brush, whose syndicated col-

umn, "Out of. My Mind," and whose 

sophisticated novels of modern manners 

are guides for thousands of the young, 

once wrote in her column: "They consider 

you quaint at Miami Beach if you haven't 

been divorced at least twice." Well the 

lady herself is listed in this clipping as 

"heading for a swift divorce." Let's be 
fashionablw ~at all costs. 

Nordhoff of the sea stories is mentioned 

in Time as divorcing the little brown woman 
in Tahiti and at the age of fifty-four marry-

ing a divorcee·'>of thirty. 

The creator' of Tarzan can't keep his wife 
out of the jungle of the divorce courts. 

Among the famous names I found in the 
newspapers in connection with divorces of 

the past two years are Roosevelt, McAdoo, 

Astor, Vanderbilt, Duke, Biddle, Cooper 

Hewitt, Rogers, McCormick. The list could, 

be continued indefinitely. Joan Biddle by 

the way rates some sort of medal; sh~ en-
ters her fifth marriage; three of the former 

ones were contracted within six months. 

Big Purses 

Whether the wealthy get mote divorces 

than do the poor or the middle class is 
perhaps a question. It should be one's 

guess that comfortable livings should help 

-25-' 



make marriages happy, homes durable, love 

more lasting. Whatever the answer to that, 

a high-bracket income and a divorce unite 

to make a wonderful headline story. 

The five-and-ten heiress is almost stale 

news to the divorce reporters. 

I read that a woman was left a million 

dollars and that she celebrated with a . 

divorce. 

Husbands named in my clippings manage 

to pay divorce settlements of $50,000, 

$175,000, $1,000,000. Sad that all that 

money couldn't have been used to buy 

permanency and happiness in marriage. 

Here's a very wealthy heiress, of an age 

when she should be in boarding school, 

marrying a playboy. A few days later she 

announces that she finds the marriage 

merely a Class-B picture, so she divorces 

him on the grounds that s~e dislikes his 

tattooing. 

Once on a time a title of nobility was 

shield for dignity and reverence. Now it is 

a bugle calling all reporters to the divorce 

proceedings. 

I find among my clippings news of a 

duchess, a countess, a baroness, and . . . 

Ileveral women called ladies. Ah yes; one 

must not forget the daughter of the "White 

Rajah," who wed and swiftly divorced the 

man of her dreams-and nightmares-a 

pork-and-beans wrestler. 

= 26 -



Old Fools 

Youngsters? Again it would be some 

comfort to be able to blame the folly of 

youth. But what about the old-timers who 
come into court on crutches? Better late 

than never, they seem to argue. 

Here's a man eighty years old, divorcing 

a woman fifty years old. This flapper of 

seventy-six gets a decree from her bride-
groom of eighty-six because he deceived 

her; he said he was only eighty, that he had 

six thousand dollars instead of five thou-

sand, and that he wouldn't insist on her 
being buried with him if she preferred to 

be buried with her former husband. 

A husband of seventy discovers after his 

marriage that his bride of sixty-three is 
just an old "gold digger." Here are two 
giddy young couples: the first seventy-nine 

and seventy-six respectively, the second 

seventy-six and seventy-five respectively. 

How can one refrain from saying, "No 

fool like an old fool"? One can't and in 

fact one won't. 

Here's Why 

Now let's see why people get divorces. 

As one reads the reasons that are con-

sidered sufficient for the obtaining of a 

divorce in America, one begins to realize 

that the main reason is this: because one of 

the parties to the contract wants it. The 

old moralists were right. Once divorce was 

permitted for grave and serious reasons, 

men and women started to offer a thou-



sand nonsensical pretexts that to them 

appeared entirely valid. It is natural 

enough that when a man gets his exercise 
by beating his wife she might , be expected 

to seek safety in separate maintenance. 

If a husband finds that his wife is slipping 

a bit of arsenic into his soup, he might 

rightly hope to bar her from his bed and 

board. 

But nowadays divorces seem to be 
granted chiefly for "mental cruelty." And 

tniit can be just about anything that a 

fa:wyer can trump up and make convincing. 
gr-does he have to bother to make it sound 

convincing? 

I present you with the reasons for 
divotctis- granted, as I found them listed in 

the newspapers. Read 'em and laugh. And 

then read 'em and-if you love the future 
of America-weep. 

Reasons Enough 

Here they are : 

She took an hour and a half to make 

up her face. 

He asked her to live in a trailer. 

He paid more attention to his auto-

mobile than he did to her. . 
He worked nights and thus spoiled 

her social life. 

He was interested in Adolf Hitler (this 

before we were in the war). 

He stunted when he was driving the 

family car. 

,- - 28 -, 



He was a vegetarian and upset her 

diet. 

She gave more time to her pet animals 

than she did to him. (In that connec-

tion note the man whose wife brought 

her pet monkey to bed with her.) 

Because he was of English ancestry 

and she of Italian, he gloated over her. 

He came to breakfast dressed in long 

underwear. 

He insisted on telling jokes in bed. 

He shot craps and brought home 

friends who shot craps. 

She served him spinach almost every 

night. 

Once he tossed a clock at her and said 

her face would stop it. 

Once at the country club he pushed 

her and embarrassed her before her 

friends. 

He took setting-up exercises until he 

drove her mad. "I married a gymnasium, 

not a man." 

When she made a bad play at bridge, 

he threw a deck of cards at her. 

When he doodled with a pencil, he 

wrote other women's names. 

"He was not subtle in his comments 

on my singing." 

She got chicken pox while they were 

on their honeymoon. 

He neglected her to play with model 

trains. 

- 29 -



She made him nervous by drumming-

with her fingers on the table. 

She was fonder of her canary than she 

was of him. 

He disliked desserts and grew angry 

when she served them. 

She woke him by hitting him with a 

pillow. 

He told her he was a big executive; 

after their marriage she found out he 

was a soda jerker. 

She had him shadowed by three ghosts. 

He threw a glass of water in her face 

because his shirts were not back from 

the laundry. 

She bought a gentleman friend a set 

of false teeth. 

Small Causes 

I gleaned this bit of advice from a most 

unexpected source. Dr. Maurice Udell of 

the Illinois Association of Chiropodists 

advised men and wome!". to care for their 

feet. Healthy feet, he maintained, made 

for pleasant dispositions. And if the dis-

positions were cheerful, divorce was remote. 

To prove his point, he quoted Superior 

Judge Rudolph Desort: 

"Cruelty charges are almost always based 

upon hundreds of petty domestic annoy-

ances, which are primarily caused by the 

grouchiness and bickering of the husband 

and the wife." 

- 30 -



The doctor however was not too hope-

ful in his statistics. If happy marriages 

depend upon sound feet, what chance for 

Chicago? Said the doctor: "Seventy per 

cent of Chicagoans have foot troubles." 

But whether the troubles originate in 

head, heart, or feet, some kind judge will 

call them sufficient to be classed under 

that capacious reason "mental cruelty." 

Reporters' Holiday 

Time was when the newspapers covered 

divorces with a merciful curtain of silence. 

Then in the days of yellow journalism they 

played up all the moist and fetid bits of 

scandal. Now many a r eporter plays them 

for the laughs. 

A couple are breaking their sacred prom-

ises; a home is going to smash; the institu-

tion of marriage, essential for the future 

of the race, is being razed. But let's hit 
the humorous angle. And let's hit it with 

a bang. 

It's done in a hundred ways. For instance 

the reporter writes it as if the wife were 

relating an amusing story: 

"I looked in the mirror and saw a couple 
making love. I thought it was very funny, 

and I laughed. Then I stopped. . . . It 

was my husband." 

Or the headline packs a pun and a 

punch. 

"Romance Goes Fritz When Wife Jails 

Mr. Fritz." 

- 31-



If the trial has something unusual about 

it, let's say the husband and the wife both 

bowl, it makes a grand piece of humorous 
writing. Who knows? The reporter may 

be noticed and tapped for gagman on a 

radio comedian's hour. 

"Mr. [Somebody] ... won a strike-and-

spare divorce today. She decided she could 

spare her husband because all he does is 

strike her. And he strikes her because she 

makes more strikes than he does on the 

bowling alley. She will bowl singles from 

now on." 

Or the thing can be worked into a slap-

stick comedy. 

"Too many wives halted the honeymoon 

of [ James Glump]. . . . Today he sings, 'If 

I . had the wings of an angel, over these 

prison walls I would fly.' He took one wife 

on a honeymoon without bothering to 
divorce her predecessor. He remembered 

to divorce the ones before this, but this 

time he just forgot. Ruth, the new wife, 

who wasn't a wife but only a gal going on 

a honeymoon, passed out with a dull thud. 

Too bad. But (Glump] .. . will honeymoon 

in a cell." 

Of course innumerable jokes are based 
on divorce complications. Former husbands 

are introduced to their exwives by well-

meaning friends. At dinner parties the 

wife-before-Iast finds herself seated beside 

the wife-of-the-minute, and daggers are 

iossed at five paces. The possibilities of 
mix-ups are innumerable. 



And the dramatic and musical-comedy 

situations! J ones finds he is not really 

married to his bride because his final decree 

isn't final. Jane thinks she is married to 

Smith, but he knows she isn't, because that 

state doesn't recognize a Mexican divorce. 

The honeymoon is about to begin, and wife 

number three turns up with back alimony 

charges, and the curtain falls as husband 

is torn away to the city jail. 

Well once on a time any divorce was a 

tragedy. It was a sign of collapse and 

failure. Now it's the basis of great good 

humor, plenty of laughs, and the swing of 

the slapstick. 

I give it up. Is my sense of humor 

atrophied? Or should I think these divorce 

jokes terribly, terribly funny? 

The Proper Dose 

One class of divorces should, I think, be 

fitted into a special category. I've a sheaf 

of them among the clippings before me. 

Could we title them "What Did You 

Expect" divorces? 

Men marry women about whom they 

know everything and then get divorces 

because the women turn out to be exactly 

what the men knew they were. Women 

marry no-account men and then, though 

the women knew the men were no-accounts, 

ask the judge to call the whole thing off 

because the men turn out to be the no-

accounts that everyone, brides especially, 

knew them to be. 

- 33 -



Here's a big newspaper cut Qf a bur-

lesque strip teaser. She did five shQWS a 
day in a cheap theater. The judge granted 

her a divQrce. ReasQn? When she gQt 

hQme, tired frQm her day's wQrk, her hus-

band wanted her to. dance fQr him. 

Here's a publicity seeker named Elaine 

Barrie, who. finally tracked dQwn JQhn 
BarrymQre. BarrymQre had fQr years made 

his fQndness fQr the bQttle the basis Qf his 

humQr Qn stage and radio.. But the lady 

who. tracked him dQwn went to. CQurt be-

cause he turned Qut to. be exactly what fQr 

the past decade he had bragged he was. 

Ethel Merman is a night-club and 

musical-cQmedy singer Qf SQme fame. After 

marrying her, her husband sues fQr divQrce 

because "I can't stand the night-club life." 

Where did he expect a night-club singer to. 
spend her evenings? At hQme, milking 

the CQws? 

Gypsy Rose Lee, nQtQriQus burlesque 

queen, fQr years dances in theaters famQus 

fQr their indecent skits and jQkes. Yet she 
asks fQr a divQrce frQm her husband 

because in 1938 he used "abusive and 
Qbscene language." What kind was used 

by the audiences at Minsky's in the days 

when she "stripped" there? 

But here is what CQmes clQse to. being a 

classic. It is frQm the Chicago. Daily News 

Qf OctQber 20, 1941. 

"Mrs. [SQ-and·sQ] . . . was awarded a 

divQrce decree by Judge [Blank] ... after 

she testified that she paid fQr her husband's 

- 34 -



first divorce, their subsequent marriage and 

honeymoon, a new car and furnishings for 

a home, and then he deserted her." She 

hired a bargain-counter husband to get his 

first divorce for her and then was surprised 

that he left her, as he had left spouse num-

ber one. 

But they all got their divorces. Can 
you understand why? 

Tragic Children 

When we come to the whole tragedy of 

the children of divorce, we should properly 

melt with pity. 

The country was briefly shocked when a 

year or so ago Life showed the ghastly 

picture of a little girl tearing herself from 

her recently divorced mother and throwing 

herself into the arms of the father she 

loved. But the court awarded her to her 

mother, and she h:j.d to be pried loose from 

her father's arms. 

Little attention was paid however to the 
sequel. A few weeks later the picture was 

reprinted in reduced size. With it was a 

letter. The child had died, and the doctors 

said the cause was a broken heart, nothing 

else. Her heart had literally been torn 
apart when her father and her mother 

wrenched their marriage-and their child 

between them. 

No Parents, Not Four 

The Saturday Evening Post some years 

ago ran a fact story called, as far as I 

remember the. title, "I Am the Child of 

-~5 -



Four Parents." It told how this child of 

divorced parents was competed for by both 

mother and father, and how each struggled 

to wjn her away from the other, enlisting 

the aid of the new partners they had 

married. 

Shortly after the article appeared, I met 

a youngster in a boarding high school who 

mentioned that her parents were divorced 

and that each had remarried. 

"Ah," I commented, quoting the title of 

the article, "you are the child of four 

parents." 

The girl's lip curled. 

"I am the child of no parents. Maybe 

the girl who wrote that article-I read it 

-was wanted by all four of them. I'm 

wanted by none. Both my parents now 

have children by the second marriages. So 

I don't belong any more. I remind them 

of the first marriage. My mother thinks 

I'm like my dad, and she dislikes me. My 

dad thinks I'm like my mother, and he 

despises me. And the new partners hate to 

see me come; they think I'll take a little 

of the affection of my parents from the 

children of these new marriages. So I 

haven't four parents. I haven't a parent in 

the world." 

That is the true story. Recently it was 

retold in novel form in "Divided by Two." 

Blows at the Children 

Boarding schools shelter many of the 

children who have been tossed out of their 

homes by warring parents, flung into a 

- 36 -



divorce court, and-the battle between the 
parents over-left without any home to go 

to. Pephaps for a time both parents, to 

hurt each ,other, tried to win the child. As 

a rule they ended with no affection for or 

interest in the child, who was the visible 

proof of tl:l ·~ir failure in marriage. 

Here are just a few of the ghastly news-

paper stories. 

"Two little girls are taken from a 

divorcee and given to their father. Said 

one of the little girls: 'Mother told us she 

never wanted to see us again'." 

Here's a photograph of an eighteen-
months-old baby brought to a Catholic 

orphanage. Her parents are college people. 

Each of the parents is fighting to get her. 

For the interval the baby has been taken 
by court order from that atmosphere of 

poisonous adult hate and given to the 
sisters. . 

Another picture snows a mother cling-

ing to her two youngsters. She has finally 
forced the father to pay seven dollars a 

. week for their maintenance. 

This pictures a wife, her face twisted 
in agony, as her little baby regards her 

with wonder and alarm. The father is 
suing for divorce to marry another woman. 

Yes; the other woman is in court too. She 

is not weeping. Leave that for the wife 

and the child. 

Walter Winchell writes: "Barbara Ben-

nett's chums say she is completely broken 

-M'-. 



about their children she had to give up to 

Morton Downey. She wakes in the middle 
of the night and sobs. The deal, they say, 

was for her to have them six .months and 
Morton to ditto." 

The mother cries. But what Walter 
Winchell is trying to catch is the agony of . 

the children tossed between their parents. 

No Reason at All 

The divorce of today that is going to 

astound the calm men of the future is the 

one that simply has no reason at all. Two 

people just decide to call it a day. As the 

cute little saying goes, they mean to 

remain "just good friends." They walk 

out on each other. The judge pats them on 

the head and hands them a little paper that 

leaves them free from all responsibility. 
And they shake hands, or even kiss, to the 

tune "Let's March Out on Matrimony." 

You'd not expect to find under this news-
paper picture of two laughing people the 

caption saying they are bent on a divorce. 

But they are, and they actually got it some 

days later. Right now the man's hand 

rests affectionately on the woman's arm; 
she leans forward to talk more intimately 

to him. The text continues: "[ So-and-so I 
. . . and his wife laughed gaily over some 

amusing incident as they met yesterday in 

an attorney's officeJ to which the wife was 

summoned to meet a divorce suit filed by 
her husband." 

. And still smiling, possibly even arm in 

arm, they'll go into court, get their divorce, 

~ 38 ~ 



and walk out "still the best of friends." 
You tell me what it means. I give it up. 

"Let's Stay Friends" 

The New Yorker carried the Profile of 
Lillian Hellman, author, among other works, 

, of "The Little Foxes" and "The Watch on 

the Rhine." Hers is another classic of 
modern marriage. 

Once on a time she was married to 
Arthur Kober, now largely of Hollywood. 

"Divorce," runs the account, "ended the 

marriage in 1932, but it did not affect 

Kober's attachment for Miss Hellman." 

No indeed. He constantly visits her to 

ask her advice on everything he does, even 

on the apartm,ent he means to rent. 

"When Kober eventually decided to 

remarry last year"-this the climax-"he 

brought his fiancee for Lillian to see, in the 

most natural way in the world; and Miss 

Hellman was so pleased with the prospec-

tive Mrs. Kober that she stood up with the 

bride and groom at the wedding as matron 

of honor." 

Can you take it? Or does the thought 
of a wife's standing up at the wedding of 

her husband to another woman strike you 
as something the Arabs might have refused 
to swallow'? 

But we come back to Tommy Manville, 

who seems to illustrate perfectly all that 

you can get away with under American 

law. Time writes up his latest marita\ 

escape thus: 

~ 39 '-



"Old Sweet Song: Bonita Francine Ed-

wards Manville, 22, after 17 days packed 

her things and said good-bye to Tommy, 

who saw her off to Reno on the train, in 

the presence of faithful photographers and 

newsmen. Sighed Manville: 'I don't know 

why she's leaving me.' Declared the bride: 

'I think he's wonderful.' Terms for the 

settlement were not discussed." 

So her reason ' for seeking a divorce is 

that she thinks her husband is wonderful. 

I actually found a case whe re the woman 

obtained a divorce because her husband 

had been too good to her. 

Alimony 

If we wanted to, we could spend a lot of 

time on that great by-produl!; of divorce, 

alimony. The daily papers in most big cities 

run regular news stories on "alimony row," 

the cells occupied by husbands who cannot 

or will not pay their alimony. Maybe you 

thought that the infamous debtors' prison 

went out of date with Dickens. Don't fool 

yourself. It flourishes, thanks to divorce, 

all over the country-probably even in your 

own home town. 

Quite the, easiest way for a publicity-

hungry women to get her picture in the 

paper is to appear in court and demand 

that exhubby pay her back alimony. 

Yet the clippings often tell of exhusbands 

who pay fat alimonies to their exwives 

now married to someone else. Husbands 

- 40--



out of work are hounded by their wives, 

who left them to take jobs. 

One story-it could be amusing if it 

wasn't so sinister-tells of a woman who 

dragged the wrong husband into court to 

sue for alimony. Only when she saw him 
under a strong light did she realize her 

mistake. She knew her ex- so slightly that 

she mistook another man for him. The 

newspapers thought it awfully funny. 

Then we have the pretty picture of 

husbands' suing wives for alimony. The 

reputed husband of Mae West thought he 

was . entitled to $1,000 a month from her 

fat earnings. An English member of parlia-

ment, very fashionable and la-de-da, showed 

Americans that they can be pikers when 

he sued his wife to have his alimony raised 

to $12,000 a year. 

Even the women of America have come 

to have their doubts about the whole ali-
mony business. One of the big women's 

magazines a,sked its readers what they 

thought of alimony, and the women couldn't 

. get together at all. 

"Should women under thirty get alimony 

when there are no children?" The vote 

was no by two to one. "Should women 

over thirty get alimony when there are no 

children ?" The vote was yes, but only by 

three to two. "Is jail the verdict for men 

who can afford to pay alimony but don't?" 
The vote was yes only by the slight margin 

of eleven to nine. 



Alimony as a Racket · 

This much is growing constantly clearer: 

For many an unscrupulous woman mar-

riage has become under our American sys-

tem a plain racket and a get-rich-quick-and-

easy scheme. She marries a well-to-do 

man, gets a divorce on the most trivial 

grounds, and with the alimony allotted to 
her is set up for life. 

I think it was The New Yorker that ran 

this cartoon, of which I remember at least 
the spirit: 

A light-weight-Iooking woman is talking 
to the divorce lawyer. 

"Which would you prefer?" he asks. 

"You'll do well with a div:orce, but I know 

a lot of women who are leading the life 

of Riley on separate maintenance." 

And Christ? 

W ell there you have a bit of the sordid 
story. It's a grim, dirty, unfunny, often 

tragic picture of divorce in America. Per-

haps though it makes you understand a 

little more clearly why Jesus Christ took 

the stand He did. 

When the Savior came to earth, divorce 

was practiced just about as freely as it is 

today. It was wrecking the home. It was 

destroying family life. It was tossing the 

children out to the wolves of the cities. 
And Christ, with that blend of human and 

divine wisdom, saw that there was just one 

course: no concessions to divorce. Any 

mitigation of the law was a fatal blow to 

-42 -



home and family. Divorce made all mar-
riage ridiculous. It simply blew up the 

home. It was parent to endless misery, 

human instability, and ruined characters. 

Christ knew why divorce had been 

granted by Moses: "Because of the hard-

ness of your hearts," He told the people 

of his day. But even they had turned it 

into a racket. So all that was over in His 

law. No more concessions. No more 

granting of reasons which would be 

stretched until they covered any whim or 

momentary annoyance or swiftly born 

"yen" for some new light of love. 

Christ branded remarriage after divorce 

simply as adultery and forbade to His fol-

lowers divorce with remarriage. 

His contemporaries in swift protest cried 

out that if this was His law it were better 

for a man not to marry. But He still 

stuck to His command. 

Christ knew human nature too well to 

permit any exceptions. He legislated for 

the good of humanity. Individuals might 

have to suffer. Their sufferings were less 

than the wreckage that divorce brought to 

the entire human race. 

U ndercutti ng 

So that was the law as the Catholic 
Church always understood it. For very 

serious reasons separation might be per-

mitted. Christ had indicated such a rea-
son when He mentioned adultery. Remar-

-43-



riage however was adultery, and that was 

all there was to it. 

But bit by bit this Christian country with 

the tacit and often expressed approval of 

many a so-called Christian minister under-

cut and chipped away the law of Christ. 

First divorce was granted for adultery, 

and remarriage was made possible for the 

innocent person. Then divorce was granted 

for cruelty that took the form of beating. 

Then for desertion. And finally for all the 

crazy reasons we have mentioned - and 

crazier ones. Next the guilty person might 

remarry after a divorce granted on the 

grounds of adultery. "Mental cruelty" sup-

planted or supplemented physical cruelty. 

Desertion came to mean one person's mov-

ing into the apartment next door because 

he preferred the southern exposure. 

And the mad chaos of our divorce situa-

tion has resulted. 

Christ knew just that would happen if 

His law was disregarded. Catholic moral-

ists have never deviated from their posi-

tion. But the "reformers" were sure 

divorce was kind and gentle and humane 

... though it has resulted in hell for the 

children, the collapse of countless homes, 

and a land in which the average marriage 

lasts only five years, not long enough for 

the oldest baby to reach the age of reason. 

That Tragic Story 

That average looks a little less terrible 

when you recall that the minority of the 

married population can through careless 

-44 -



marriages, quick divorces, and breathless 

remarriage bring the average down so low. 

There are still in the majority American 

homes in which husbands and wives live 

together in happy devotion to their children, 

giving them the love and lifelong training 

that God and nature intended they should 

give. 

Yet the possibility of snap marriages 

and snappier divorces makes this tragic 

fact remain: Five is the number of years 

the average marriage holds together. 

The Betrayal of the Selfish 

We cannot bring this discussion to a 

conclusion without paying tribute to the 

thousands and thousands of happy mar-

riages in America and the splendid loyalty 

that characterizes the majority of Ameri-

can husbands and wives. We know of their 

lovely homes. We have met their charm-

ing, wholesome, well-bred, and well-edu-

cated children. 

Yet here is the other situation that can-

not be ignored. And even though there 

are good homes, we cannot blink at the 

fact that divorce in America has become a 

sinister joke or a stark tragedy. 

We simply cannot stand passively by 

while for any sort of caprice traitors to 

marriage can and do play hob with the 

institution which is the fountain of the 

nation's future. 

Christ is once more proved by the facts 

of the case absolutely right in the stand 

-45-



He took: No divorce; separation only for 

some extraordinary reason-and then with-

out remarriage. 

In view of the way that divorce has 

sliced and hacked at our national life, the 

Catholic Ghurch again manifested herself 

as the friend of the home, of the family, 

of the child, and of the future of the race. 

She was, not cruel, but kind and patriotic 

when she outlawed divorce with remarriage 

and demanded that men and women make 

a success of the solemn contract they 

entered. 

It is time we stopped giving headlines to 

the only people in the world who seem to 

pmfit by . the failures they make of their 

jobs. We despise all other failures; let's 

not act as if it were smart or clever or 

fashionable to make a failure of just about 

the most important natural job given to a 

man and a woman, the job of making a 

home, collaborating- with God in the crea-

tion of life and the safeguarding of the 

whole future of the nation. 

- 46-



•••••••••••••• w ••••••••••• 

EXCELLENT PAMPHLETS 

ON 

MORALS 

Are You Scrupulous? 

ConfessIOn Is a Joy? 

Fashionable Sin 

Murder in the Classroom 

Of Dirty Stories 

Prodigals and Christ 

The Pure of Heart 

The Ruling Passion 

Speaking of Birth Control 

What of Lawful Birth Control? 

What Birth Control Is Doing 
to the United States 

When W e Go to Confession 

Why Be Decent? 

Single copy, lOc (by ma il. 12c) 

25 for $2.25 

50 for $4.00 

....... t ••••••••• nt.n ... nt •••• t~ 



~38 

THE QUEEN'S WORK 

3742 West Pine Boulevard 

ST. LOUIS. MO. 






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