6 DECEMBER 1930, Page 18

THE WORLD, THE HOUSE, AND THE BAR

[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]

SIR,—Your kindly review of my book contains a slight mistake on a question of law. Commenting on my statement that young married people, separated and each having started an independent establishment, are likely to shed bastard children on the world, your reviewer states that the children might at least be legitimized by the subsequent marriage of their parents. Unluckily that is not so. Section 2 of the Act (the Legitimacy Act of 1926) reads as follows : " Nothing in this Act shall operate to legitimate a person whose father or mother was married to a third person when the illegitimate person was born." So that if married persons separated, but not being divorced, have children as the results of " separate establishments," such children can never become legitimate.

The mistake is one which anyone writing without having the Act actually before him could easily make, but as the statement might possibly raise false hopes in some, I have ventured to send this correction.—I am, Sir, &e.;