The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-09-28

more honest and ethical than the sug- terfuges and indireetions in vogue else where.
 An American woman, who had ire quent conversations with Felipe Carrillo and was familiar with the discussions that preceded the drafting of the law in it's present form-it was decreed April 2, 1923-had this to say of the ideas that governed its inception.
 'ECarrillo idealized the sex relation ship. A marriage in which love was not present on the part of both hus- band and dwife was to him a social crime. A marriage that lacked the mu. tlial love of man and woman was not worth maintaining. He believed the most intimate of human relationships should not be dragged into the court room"
 There have been, to be sure, instances of Americans who have made the trip here in the hope of beating alimony.' Whether they have ultimately been ss4e- cessful or not is not known to the auth critics here. who point out that there is nothing in the Yucatan divorce that will prevent an aggrieved wife's ob- taining protection of her financial in- terests in the courts of the United States.
 Between this law and that of Soviet Russia there is no essential difference in the treatment of divorces to which both parties agree. Where one objects, the Russian law requires "a court hear ing and the assigning of cause. Whereas no Russian may, according to he reports, obtain more than three di- v0rces in one year, there is no such restriction in Yucatan.
 The Yucatan law has not fulfilled the prophecies of it's opponents and ushered in an era of free love" with official sanction. The increase in di- vorces has been about fifty per cent, including foreigners who formerly did not figure in the total. In 1922 there were 5S divorces registered at Merida :; in 1923 there were 115, and of these 13 had taken place before the new law was put into effect.
 Some forty Americans, among them about dozen women, have taken ad- vantage of the law thus far. There have also been English, Canadians, Germans, Spanish and Mexicans from outside Yu- cdtan.
 'f This accommodating law has proved useful in all sorts of cases," says a resident American. "One divorce parted a man from a wife to whome he had been married seven months before he discovered she could not read or write. Two couples changed partners, all with in few hours. A boy and girl holding ultra-mOdern notions married one day to appease the demands of their parents, and the next secretly obtained a divorce that they might live untrammeled by legal bonds. A rich oil-well driller di- vorced his sixth wife to marry the seventh, secure in the knowledge that this need not conclude the series while there was recourse to the laws of Yu- catan.
 There was the case of 'divorce-seek- ing husband who was stranded here during the rebellion. He lacked the documents proving his marriage. No steamers were running. With difficulty he got message through to the girl in Philadelphia who was waiting to marry him. She was to send the papers t6 Mexico City for the necessary sigma ture, have them returned to her, and then get them through the blockade in to. Yucatan. After vain attempts to use the mails and the loss of two sets of documents, she came to New Orleans and there hired tugboat. The captain backed out at the last minute, however. She sought a job on a freight CT to port on the Mexican coast. After many refusals on the ground such boats had no place for a woman she donned mems clothes and her persua- siveness and persistence won her the job of cook and cabin boy on a fruit boat going to Frontera. From there to one little port and another she made her way in small coasting sailboats, missed her lover-who in the meantime had chartered another sailboat to meet her-and after weeks of hardships and struggle, in country aflame with civil