The Pittsburgh Press (November 28, 1945)
Millett: Erring wives blamed
Marriage should be given chance
By Ruth Millett
Shocking figures: There were almost half as many divorce suits as marriages in the first 10 months of 1945 in 30 of the nation’s largest cities.
Many of the suits, it is reported, were filed by servicemen, charging unfaithfulness.
Isn’t there something wrong with that picture? The American public has been forced to accept anything but a pretty picture of the morality of servicemen overseas.
Right now, the Navy is trying to answer a chaplain’s complaint about the prostitution situation in Japan, in which the chaplain says he saw a line of enlisted four abreast almost a block long waiting their turn at a house of prostitution.
We have had scores of such ugly pictures during the war – and however shocked we may have been by them, we have had to accept them as part of the total picture of war.
Waiting wives have had to accept such reported conditions, too.
And some of the waiting wives have figured that what men can get by with in wartime women can, too.
But there has been no leniency in anyone’s judgment for erring war wives. And the man who comes home to find that his wife has been unfaithful to him – even though he may have been unfaithful himself – thinks it is his right and his duty to cast her off.
Isn’t it time we took a more adult view of the situation? If it is true that the husband who in ordinary times would have been faithful to his marriage vows might not have remained faithful during years of separation – isn’t it just as likely that the wife who was unfaithful in wartime would have been faithful if her marriage had had a normal chance?
For the sake of marriage and the children involved, shouldn’t this be the realistic attitude of both husbands and wives whose marriages were interrupted by war: “What happened during the war years when living was not normal for either women or men should not be allowed to break up a marriage. The important thing now is to give the marriage a chance and see if it won’t work under normal conditions.”