present law is so, whether its strictness leads to its common disregard,' and whether the law as proposed to be altered would 'lessen the regard for the sanctity of marriage,' are exactly the matters at issue.

On p. 96 we are told, the law should be such as would give relief when serious causes intervene which are generally and properly recognised as leading to the break-up of married life.' This is the nearest approach to a definite principle contained in the Report. But it will carry Lord Gorell and his colleagues much further than they are prepared to go. If it be accepted, the really logical reformers are the apostles of divorce by mutual consent, of divorce when the affection of either partner has been withdrawn, and of marriage terminable at will a point of view which had several defenders, male and female, amongst the witnesses. There are also, scattered up and down the Report, statements such as this (p. 96): We do not recommend the Legislature to permit of the dissolution of marriage for other than very grave causes. Again (p. 96), the authors disown any intention to recommend that divorce should be granted for trivial reasons.' Flabby sentences of this kind convey no clear idea and serve no purpose beyond displaying the failure of the authors to discern even in their own minds any reasoned foundation for their work.

The Majority Report would be a stronger document if Lord Gorell and his colleagues had frankly given up the vain effort to find a principle where none exists. The real distinction between the Majority and the Minority Reports is that, while the latter insists that divorce, if it is not to endanger the very existence of family life, must rest upon some defensible principle by which its application can be controlled, the former looks at the hardness of hard cases and would allow divorce, wherever the cases are hard enough and occur with sufficient frequency, without reference to any principle at all. Lord Gorell's reiterated question to witnesses who told some sad story of a deserted wife was to this effect: How does the State gain by keeping this poor woman tied to a rascal who has bolted to America, when, if she were free, she might be happily married again? Nothing could make clearer the point of view from which the Majority Report was conceived. It is the assumed result, in the particular

case, that is the real inducement towards the extension of grounds of divorce. Notwithstanding the attempts to give to the Majority Report a decent appearance of argument, if any wider idea than the consideration of hard cases had been in the mind of its chief author, his question would have taken a different form. It would have been: How would the State lose if divorce were made possible, the matter being judged not by its result in this one hard case, but by its general effect?

We by no means deny that a great deal may be said for a divorce law which makes no pretence of consistency; and deals with each case as the Kadi under a palm-tree is supposed to dispense justice. Hard cases could then be relieved and undeserving applicants sent empty away. The same might be said of every other department of law. But the difficulty would be to find the ideal Kadi, quick to decide, too astute to be deluded, of infallible judgment, immensely resourceful and impeccably just. It is open to doubt whether even Mr Cecil Chapman might not feel the strain excessive. At any rate we could not hope to secure a supply of adequate successors.

It is a truism that the tendency of any divorce law must be to lessen the sense of the permanence of the marriage tie. A relationship which cannot be dissolved at all, and one that can be broken off, will obviously strike the mind differently. The extension of divorce is therefore the growth of something which cannot but possess elements of possible disturbance to family life. But the danger of actual mischief is indefinitely increased if grounds of divorce are not only multiplied, but are chosen on no principle and are accompanied by purely artificial conditions. If the idea be once accepted, that if a marriage be unsuccessful it may be dissolved, the pressure, which must always be on the side of further relaxation, will certainly prove too strong for any merely arbitrary restrictions. They will disappear, and the risk to family life which is inherent in all divorce will thus grow into a great peril menacing the very foundations of society.

The experience of divorce in the United States is of signal importance from this point of view. Divorce is granted in almost all the States for many causes-but chiefly for desertion or cruelty-and by many courts. Some degree of mutual arrangement in most divorce

suits may be taken for granted (vol. ii, p. 158). In 1906 the number of divorces was 86 per 100,000 of the population, which is considerably more than double the number in proportion to population in any other country in the world except Japan. According to the Census Report, 1909 (p. 37), 'the divorce rate, like the velocity of a falling body, is constantly increasing.' There exists something like a general recognition of a marked unsettlement and restlessness of family life. Many leading Americans deplore what one witness called 'the growing indifference to the duty and obligation of marriage.' According to the same witness, Mr Newton Crane, the increasing number of divorces in the United States has aroused a general public interest in that country, which has resulted in a widespread movement for their reduction' (vol. ii, p. 160). Mr Roosevelt some years ago noted the same sinister tendency. 'One of the most unpleasant and dangerous features,' he said, 'of our American life is the diminishing birthrate, the loosening of the marital tie among old native American families' (Census Report, p. 4).

The American witnesses considered sexual immorality less common in the United States than in England; and an anonymous correspondent of the Times '(' D.,' 'Times,' Nov. 29, 1912) severely criticised the Minority Report for not recording their opinion. But the point of this evidence was to show that the loosening of family ties in America must be due to other causes than vice; it is the fact rather than the cause of this loosening which is material to the argument of the Minority Report. Still, it is well to hope that the moral standard in the States is as high as the witnesses think. We should like, however, to be sure that we are using words in the same sense. When we read such newspaper paragraphs as the following, which we copy almost verbatim-they are common enough-we are in doubt.

has left her husband,

has fled to New The A's, when they

Mrs. A, wife of the well-known and in company with B, the eminent York. A divorce is to be obtained. married, agreed to separate as soon as they found one another's society tiresome; and both, despite the New York excursion, remain friends.'

In England this is called shameless adultery. In America it is only the working of easy divorce laws.

The connexion between the decay of home life and the growth of divorce is not perceived by all Americans, and was questioned by a witness, Mr Barratt (vol. ii, pp. 187, 188), who, however, seemed to admit it so far as the rich are concerned. The same witness (vol. ii, pp. 172, 173) complained that it had been formerly represented that one marriage in twelve ended in divorce, but that the figures on which this statement had been founded were wrong in consequence of non-registration of many marriages. But the error does not affect the comparison of divorces with population, which alone is relied on in the Minority Report. This comparison is sufficiently portentous; and we need not concern ourselves with corrections which relate to some entirely different statistics.

The chief lesson of American experience is not to be obscured by points of this nature. The facts which are material and are not challenged are these divorces easily obtained on the grounds recommended by the Majority Report; a very great and rapidly-growing divorce rate; and a general unsettlement of family life. While we listen with respect to the common, perhaps prevalent, American opinion, that divorce is a popular and firmly established institution' (vol. ii, p. 158), and that, whatever is amiss with family life in the States is not to be traced to divorce but to other causes, it seems unreasonable to exclude it as at least one efficient factor of the forces at work. But the point of importance to us at the present time is to note that divorce has certainly failed in the States to do what its advocates predict it will do in England, namely, foster family life, raise the standard of morality,' and increase 'regard for the sanctity of marriage' (Rep., p. 96). America is in this respect like every other country where divorce has been freely granted. The Minority Report (p. 175) states that

'no witness has been able to tell us of a country where, as the result of greater facilities for the dissolution of marriage, public morality has been promoted, the ties of family, of husband and wife, of parents and children, have been strengthened, and home life has been made purer and more settled.'

RENGE PUBLIC LIBRARY.

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Art. 12.-THE STRATEGY OF THE BALKAN WAR.

SINCE the period of the Napoleonic wars, the steady growth of population, the rise in material prosperity, the development of agriculture, industries, communications, buildings and enclosures, have all combined to alter profoundly the face of Western and Central Europe. But the general condition of European Turkey remains what it was a hundred or five hundred years ago. From the point of view of military science this is to be regretted, for we all want to know what modern European warfare really means. We want to know how the enormous changes in material civilisation, which have taken place in the last century, are going to affect the conduct of warlike operations, for affect them they certainly will. And yet we are little wiser than we were before this Balkan War, for the campaign has been fought in a region where Napoleon, if he were brought to life again, would find little in the landscape to surprise him.

Now, in studying a theatre of war, the features which normally attract the strategist's attention are, first, communications, the road and railway systems; secondly, natural obstacles, the mountains, rivers, marshes, forests and enclosures; thirdly, the resources in the way of food; lastly, the nature of the inhabitants and their habitations. Bearing these points in mind, look at a map of European Turkey. Few railways, few roads; a mountainous country; few towns, few ports; the land apparently undeveloped and therefore probably poor. So it is, very poor; not that the soil is barren or Nature unkind, but that the country is thinly populated, and, where there are few cultivators, the crops will be small. Moreover, during the long years of Turkish maladministration, there have been few markets, great difficulties of intercourse and transport, little or no security. The inhabitants have therefore been accustomed to sow just enough to satisfy their own requirements and those of the Turkish tax-collectors, and no more. Except, then, that after the autumn harvest stores laid in for winter consumption might be commandeered, there is normally no surplus, nothing to spare for invading or defending armies. Armies operating anywhere in European Turkey