It is for this reason that I am altogether persuaded of the need of much greater facilities of divorce than exist at present: divorce on the ground of mutual consent, and based on inability through any cause to maintain true partnership in marriage.
There are some men and also women unsuited for marriage and quite undesirable as life-partners; they are not, however, undesirable because of the legal bond, but because of certain qualities which as individuals they possess. And this wider facility of divorce would do very much to lessen individual hardships, and moreover it would cleanse, in a way not sufficiently recognised, the immorality which is present in many unions. Marriage, with its fixed duties and the restrictions it does impose, in particular, upon the woman, will always appear to some a bondage from which they will seek the quickest way of escape. If no honourable way is allowed to them, they will take a dishonourable course. This may be deplored, it cannot (at any rate under existing conditions of character and public opinion) be helped, and nothing but evil can follow by pretending it is not so.
Thus we find that the difficulty of divorce is the strongest factor that brings disgrace and immorality into marriage.
This matter of honourable divorce is, however, one only of the almost countless questions in the tangle of considerations involved in the difficult matter of any attempt to change sexual conduct. More important, perhaps, is the great disproportion between the two sexes in a country that calls itself and tries to be monogamous. In our society, where so many conditions and causes have corresponded to make marriage more and more difficult, there are a very large number of women and also some men, and will be for a long time, who, from necessity rather than from choice, have to seek to satisfy their sex needs and to find love in the best way that they can. I do not see that we can or ought to condemn without fuller knowledge than as a rule we can have, these breaches of the prohibitions and laws of marriage: I am very certain that no good can be gained by branding those who commit them as sinners. Rather the conditions that give rise to such conduct must be openly faced and wherever possible dealt with. War, acting as it must inevitably do in increasing these evils and making marriage more difficult for many women, perhaps will bring us to do this. Changes in our laws may be forced upon our acceptance. We shall have to be more careful to protect life and to prevent waste of the powers of life. We cannot, therefore, I think, go on, in this question of the sex needs that are not satisfied in marriage, with the old game of pretence, that no irregular conduct need be considered as long as it can be hidden, or at least not publicly acknowledged.