Bertrand Russell: Why Men Fight

“The other episode is this. A divorce was obtained by Mr. A. against Mrs. A. and Mr. B. Mr. B. was married and Mrs. B., on hearing of the divorce proceedings, obtained a decree nisi against Mr. B. Mr. B. is at any moment liable to be called to the Front, but Mrs. B. has for some months declined to make the decree nisi absolute, and this prevents him marrying Mrs. A., as he feels in honour bound to do. Yet the law allows any petitioner, male or female, to obtain a decree nisi and to refrain from making it absolute for motives which are probably discreditable. The Divorce Law Commissioners strongly condemned this state of things, and the hardship in question is immensely aggravated in war-time, just as the war has given rise to many cases of bigamy owing to the chivalrous desire of our soldiers to obtain for the de facto wife and family the separation allowance of the State. The legal wife is often united by similar ties to another man. I commend these facts to consideration in your columns, having regard to your frequent complaints of a falling birth-rate. The iniquity of our marriage laws is an important contributory cause to the fall in question.

3Some interesting facts were given by Mr. Sidney Webb in two letters to The Times , October 11 and 16, 1906; there is also a Fabian tract on the subject: “The Decline in the Birth-Rate,” by Sidney Webb (No. 131). Some further information may be found in “The Declining Birth-Rate: Its National and International Significance,” by A. Newsholme, M.D., M.R.C.S. (Cassell, 1911).

4The fall in the death-rate, and especially in the infant mortality, which has occurred concurrently with the fall in the birth-rate, has hitherto been sufficiently great to allow the population of Great Britain to go on increasing. But there are obvious limits to the fall of the death-rate, whereas the birth-rate might easily fall to a point which would make an actual diminution of numbers unavoidable.

1I should add artists, but for the fact that most modern artists seem to find much greater difficulty in creation than men of science usually find.