The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1917-12-08
DOROTMY DIX TALKS
BY DOROTHY DIX
wOrid's Highest Paid Woman Writes.
The Supreme Passion.


of men who have slain the
men who robbed them of their wives
And the unwritten law OF woman
which recognizes motherhood as the
supreme passion of woman,s soul,
has saved the woman who killed the
man who was trying to rob OF her
child.
This was in the case of Mrs. Blanca
D SaulIes, who shot her divorced hus-
band few months ago in his home
at Hampstead, L l., when he refused
to give her little boy back to hsr even
for the time the court had allotted
the child to her.
Never was there a more pitiful
story. with a grimmer ending that that
which lies behind this tragedy in high
life. Mrs. DSaulles, who is only
twenty-three now, is a beautiful wo-
man who belongs to an aristocratic
and wealthy Chilean. family. Jack
D'Saulles, a handsome and fascinating
young American, went down to Chile
to seek his fortune. They met and,
after a romantic and tempestuous
wooing. the girl. who was only seven
teen. married him.
He brought her to America and,
according to her lawyers, almost at
once began neglecting her and mis-
treating her. With his handsome face
and charming personality he was one
of those men who are the joy of the
street and the curse of the home. The
great white way lured him as the
flames lure: a moth. He was man
of many loves. He spent his wife's
fortune on jewels and dresses. and
wine suppers for chorus girls. He
put the supreme insult upon her of
ever bringing his women companions
into her home, until, at last, she
could stand it no longer and she di-
vorced him.
There had been a child born to her,
and in her loneliness nd her n1fSaFV-
for she was a stranger in strange
land-her heart had set itself with
more than the ordinary mother de-
votion upon this babe. beautiful boy.
thousands of miles away. This child
was all that she had to love-the
only frail little spar of happiness that
she had to cling to in the great black
sea of misery on which her life boat
had been wrecked at the very begin
ming of its voyage.
She asked the court to award her
the custody of the child so that she
might go back to Chile and dwell
among her own people. and have the
comfort of her mothers love and SYM
pathy. The court refused to permit
the child to be taken out of America
and ordered that he should live alter
nate months with the mother and
father, and it was when she believed
that her former husband was deliber-
ately breaking faith with this arrange
ment and that he was planning to
keep the boy that the desperate
mother fired her fatal shot.
But before this she had been mad
dened by the little boys artless tales
of the life he led with the father, for
unknowing what he told, the little
4-year-old baby lisped of beautiful
ladies t whose perfumed apartments
his father took him. and of bar
keepers that he had been taught to
call by their names, and of the ten
der mercies of hired servants who put
him to bed when his father was away
from home at night
OF course, there can be no justifi-
cation for murder. The individual
cannot be permitted to take VEN
geance for individual wrongs. That
way would lie chaos and the over
throw of all law and order. The law
must take its cold hard way. but in
the case of this poor tortured woman
who has slain the faithless husband
who had not only broken her heart
but she believed had taken her child
from her. there will stand back OF
her the sympathy of every woman
in the land who will pray that strict
| justice will turn aside its face and let
mercy reign in its stead.
Women have no bitterer complaint
against the law than the way in which
| il deals with them about their chill
dren. In many states the law gives
the child entirely to its father. in
several until very recently it was ever
possible for a man to will his unborn
| child away to a stranger, and in mos
| of the states it has taken long hard
fight to get laws passed that made
| the mother who bore a child equal
| guardian of it with its father.
And this in the face of nature that
makes the mother passion; even OF
the dumb brute, the strongest instinct
4 % ikS 70 mr.
the gentlest animal will turn upoT
you and fight to the death, ant
among human beings it is the mother
love that is the one blind, changeiess
passion that endures all things, thai
| suffers all things, and that no il
treatment can kill.
The lover must see beauty an6
charm to inspire devotion. Mother
( love can wrap itself so closely about
the most hideous deformity that il
does not even perceive its ugiiness
The love of man for woman. anC
woman for man, dies of cruelty anG
neglect, but the more a mothers
heart is SCARED and bruised the ten
derer it grows.
1t is the mother who stands outside
of the prison door waiting TO take hel
child, sin SCARED, disgraced, back Il
her bosom. an outcast from every
| thing but a mothers love It is
mother who never forgets and WHIT
still weeps in the silence of the nigh
over a baby's grave on which thu
grass has been growing f. half E
century.
This being true, who can wonder
that a woman standing helpless be
fore the man made law that tears he
child from her arms and gives it tt
the father grows desperate, tina
one more hysterical, hotter bloodeC
than the most. goes mad and wreak!
her poor, pitiful vengeance on TIL
man who. she thinks, is going to tax,
her child f. ON her? At such a mo
ment a woman is nothing but a prim
tive ANIMAL lioness robbed of he
whelp-and inStinctively defends it.
One comedies that in the case of
divorced couple it needs a Solomon
to decide the vexed question of which
parent shall have the children. but a
least this rule. that they should b