Family in Wartime

Last week educators, sociologists and physicians met in Chicago and learnedly discussed The Family in Wartime. The delegates were not prepared to bet a plugged nickel on the family's immediate prospects. Already, declared Professor Willard Waller of Columbia University, although the U. S. was not at war, the national-defense program had begun to raise hell with U. S. families. He ticked off wartime dangers: > Disruption of relations between parents and children.

> Increased prostitution.

> Increased delinquency.

> Spread of venereal disease.

> Undermining of the morals of young men who leave home to work in defense plants.

> Disillusionment of youth, postwar.

These considerations failed to alarm the only speaker at the conference whose family was actually at war--British Novelist Somerset Maugham. Mr. Maugham rose to report that war had not weakened but strengthened family ties. To the learned sociologists' warnings, Mr. Maugham irritably retorted: "I don't see that the family has anything to do with it. If an air raid sounds, you go to the nearest centre, if you are a nervous person, and if not, you go about your business. Before doing either, you don't look around for the rest of your family."

Mr. Maugham added a warning of his own: The trouble with France was that family ties, especially between mothers and sons, were too close. This unhealthy condition, said he, contributed in no small measure to France's moral breakdown and final defeat.

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