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Very little. The men of the middle and upper classes who happened to be engaged have in very many cases been wise and patriotic enough to marry, and their wives have proved themselves as full of courage as of love. In order to marry, men have often been obliged to pay the Church an absurd tax, for the Church has shown itself quite inadequate to the occasion, and trumpery restrictions, meaningless in times of peace and a scandal in time of war, have not been relaxed. The poor man cannot afford a special license, and in many instances has married without the aid or sanction of the Church. As we know, the State decided to recognise the unmarried wives of the nation's brave defenders, a courageous and proper step that evoked the wildest protests from the narrow-minded, the "unco guid," and the fanatics who believe that man was made for morality rather than that morality was made for man. They did not pause to reflect that our absurd and antiquated divorce laws are the chief cause of illicit unions, and that divorce is hardly less hard for the poor to obtain than are decent housing, warm clothing, and nourishing food. Happily, in making this concession to the men who are offering their lives to their country, the genius of red tape contrived to assert itself. Hard though it may be to realise, it was for some time a fact that, if a man home on leave married his unmarried wife in order that his children might bear his name, his wife's allowance ceased because he came under the head of those who married after enlisting! The very quintessence of stupidity could have achieved nothing finer.

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