FOR AND AGAINST

Mrs. X..., who adores her husband, is going to divorce... Little Mrs. Z..., who also adores her husband, is going to divorce too. Divorces are being announced everywhere. Mrs. Y... told her lawyer, "No! No! My decision is irrevocable... I love my husband too much, I love my children too much not to break up my marriage!...
Let's get divorced!... Sardou's old play will become fashionable again, and I hope it will be staged this spring on one of our subsidized stages... And we will read in the society columns:
"Mr. and Mrs. Du Pont gave a brilliant reception yesterday on the occasion of their recent divorce. The two ex-spouses were warmly congratulated and are leaving today for the Riviera, where they plan to spend their divorce honeymoon."

This is not, alas! a joke. Indeed, a few divorces are already being announced. And these divorces are due not to painful domestic disputes, nor to culpable infidelity, but simply to a certain small provision of the law recently passed by the House. This insidious provision of the law tends, as we know, to make the wife responsible in fiscal matters for the failings or errors of her husband. So Mrs. X... and Mrs. Z... and many other mothers are already panicking... They certainly don't want to evade taxes... But they understand nothing about their husbands' affairs and are unaware of anything... And they already see themselves stripped of all their assets, of all their personal property, following dark adventures, both marital and tax-related... They are panicking... And to protect their assets and especially their children's assets, to be sure that they and their children won't be thrown out onto the street, with nothing, they are resorting to the last resort: divorce...
This way, they won't have to bear the possible responsibility for their husbands' mistakes or failings...

Our legislators, obviously, didn't foresee these complications. They didn't foresee divorce on the grounds of tax incompatibility! First moral: A law that frightens always risks being a futile law... People run away, and the law remains unsolved...
Second moral: Pills, even fiscal ones, must not exceed certain dimensions. Otherwise, no one wants to swallow them... The prospect of dying of suffocation is, indeed, a sad one...

Maurice PRAX.