FOR AND AGAINST

The question will not be asked... This short sentence was once often uttered during a famous trial that divided France into two camps.
The question will not be asked...
The fateful expression put an end to all discussion, settled all controversy.
The expression could be used again and could even, it seems, be used profitably in a case that is a terrible tragedy, in the case of rents, in the case of homeless families...
In this case, in this dark case, there is, in fact, a question that should never be asked and that is asked at every moment... It is a question that seems like nothing and that is monstrous, and that means that hundreds of families cannot find housing. It is a simple and very small question:
Do you have children?...
The concierge, the owner, too often, ask the candidate tenant this insidious question:

Do you have children?... The question is odious and indiscreet... The one who asks it always has, alas! dire intentions. The one who asks it does not, in fact, intend to be interested in the presumed children of the candidate tenant and is not disposed to make especially advantageous conditions to the father of many children. Quite the opposite. The one who asks it is always firmly resolved to refuse any rental to the candidate tenant who is the father of a large family.
The question, all in all, is, without exaggeration, a scandalous and criminal question.
It must be decreed that it will never be asked again; this indecent and hypocritical phrase must be banned... The grocer does not ask the customer if he has children. He knows that it is none of his business... He sells beans or mustard and he is discreet. The merchant-owner must be similarly reserved... He must rent his apartments and he has the right to try to rent them at an advantage. But he does not have the right to take care of what does not concern him. The private life of his "clients" as long as this private life remains honorable is not his business... His "clients" can have twelve children or be single, he has nothing to do with that...
In the meantime, I allow myself to give a little naive advice to prospective tenants with families who are asked: Do you have children?
Let them always answer: No!...
Murmuring, then, in a low voice: No and no... It is none of your business

Maurice PRAX.

PS
I spoke, yesterday, at the end of my article, of a child who amused himself by calling himself an anarchist and who killed himself "the other day". Mr. Léon Daudet may have believed that I was referring to the death of his unfortunate son. I have never had, it must be said, and I could not have had this thought. I wanted to speak of the young anarchist Taupin, who, the other day, that is to say on October 21, committed suicide out of heartache for Germaine Berton, and whom I believed to be dead. When I spoke of Philippe Daudet, I did so with emotion, bowing before the grief of his unfortunate parents and asking that light be shed on the mysterious and troubling circumstances of his end. M. P.

FOR AND AGAINST
The housing crisis (continued and... endless):

The question is asked to me by a landlord...
-Is it the landlord who doesn't want children?...

Nine times out of ten, the landlord doesn't live in the house he rents. So why wouldn't the landlord tolerate children in the building he doesn't live in?... Large families can't bother him, personally. He doesn't risk being woken up at night by the moans of babies. Nor does he risk being annoyed, during the day, by the racket of young schoolchildren... So why would he ban children from his houses?...
My landlord correspondent continues:
"Isn't it the tenant who often doesn't want children? Isn't it the tenant, even if he has a family, who screams if the kid upstairs or the little girl downstairs bothers him? Isn't he the one who bangs on the walls, who shouts: "Are you going to leave me alone, for God's sake? Are you going to let me sleep?" and who regularly addresses indignant complaints to either the caretaker or the owner because a child has made a "difficulty" in his house?...
"Do you need documents," adds the owner?... I have at your disposal fifty letters of complaint, fifty letters to me addressed because of the children, by tenants. It was the little boy on the third floor who rang the doorbell on the fifth floor... It was the kid on the second floor who stole the croissant and the milk jug left on the mezzanine. It was the little girl on the sixth floor who shouts too loudly. It was the schoolboy on the fourth floor who writes on the walls. Complaints rain down. The tenants protest: "Finally! What is the landlord doing? ... What a dirty place his place is! ... We won't pay the next installment if this continues ... And blah blah blah ... "
... I humbly admit that this landlord's letter, which is undoubtedly a bit exaggerated, nevertheless left me dreaming ... It does not shed any light on the difficult problem of housing ... It does not teach us anything sensational ... It only teaches us to be prudent ...

When something is wrong with us, we like to immediately place the responsibility for the whole affair on a single person, on a single category of citizens, on a single head ... It is convenient, of course, but it is not always very fair and things are not so simple!

In modern life we ​​are all, in spite of ourselves, in solidarity with each other. And we are not united only in our virtues .... We are also united in our faults and in our injustices, in our miseries and in our embarrassments.

Maurice PRAX.