29 MARCH 1919, Page 3

It seems to us that in such cases, if the

police have nothing against the enemy alien and if his wife vouches for him, the man might be allowed to remain on her guarantee of his good behaviour. St. Paul thought that " the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife." It is equally reasonable to suppose that the ordinary German will imbibe a sufficiency of our ideas of right and wrong from his English wife to keep him from traitorous practices. However that may be, the English women and children must not be allowed to suffer because their husbands and fathers were not naturalized before the war. Our law requiring a woman to take her husband's nationality works well enough in ordinary times, but as applied now to these English women and children it seems positively inhuman. In most American States, we believe, a woman who marries an alien retains her American citizenship.