Mendelssohn v. Souso

From Penobscot to San Pedro the corridors of U. S. public buildings echoed last week--as for four weeks before--with the tread of tentative but determined feet. Faced with the greatest defense crisis in U. S. history, young folks were mobilizing. Their march led to no military camp but to the marriage-license bureau. From hundreds of churches and magistrates' offices paraded husky young men, brides on their arms, who preferred Mendelssohn to Sousa.

Not all these newlyweds were counting on the supposition that married men will be exempt from the draft; but everywhere marriage-license records were broken. In Cleveland someone started a rumor and Cupid became cupidity. "Is it true," asked young women in a flood of phone calls, "that a war veteran's widow will get no pension if she marries after Aug. 12?"

In Atlanta, society editors packed their columns with August engagements; in July marriage licenses zoomed 24%. Chicago licenses were up 25%. In the Los Angeles district, where clerks were too busy to strike totals, officials estimated a 40% increase in weddings. In Manhattan the line formed before opening time, police had to be called to keep order. In Brooklyn nearly 1,000 couples jammed the corridors on Saturday morning. Some of them got in line as early as 6:30 a.m. When the doors were closed for the afternoon some 600 couples were still waiting, went home to wait another week. Small-town records were minor versions of the big-city records.

Metropolitan newspapers were quick to point out that the Burke-Wadsworth Bill promises no specific draft exemption for married men. It was still quite on the cards that the Army and Navy might well require a year's service in uniform of all able-bodied U. S. men, wife or no wife.

Meanwhile, many a public official and newspaper inveighed against hasty and witless weddings. Cried Cleveland's Probate Judge Nelson Brewer: "Those young men who are unpatriotic and ungallant enough to marry purposely to evade the draft will leave their wives when the emergency ends." Said the Los Angeles Times: "Persons who take responsibilities lightly shuck them with equal facility. . . . The mass effect upon our social institutions of debasing matrimony into a funkhole for slackers is hardly an uplifting one."

But it was by no means certain that all those who hastened to marry were looking for funkholes. Among them, doubtless, were many men willing to serve their country who wanted to enjoy the pleasures of marriage before they ran the risks of a possible war.

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