Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-08-25
CLUBWOMEN OF THE NATION
Dr. Emma Wods Address Nationality" One of High
lights on Program of Institute of Public Affairs
Principal Points Quoted.

breaking zeal was denied them because
the men whom they had married had
refused to become citizens of the country
in which they lived. In 1920, when
woman's right to vote became nation
wide, a larger number awoke to a
knowledge OF this deprivation. During
the years of the war women found
themselves aliens, often enemy aliens,
in the land of their birth, whose bound
aries they had never crossed.
This gave strength to a movement
already started among organized women
in many countries for the independent
right of married women to their own
nationality, and resulted, in Septem-
Der, 1922, in the United States in the
adoption Of the So-called Gable act,'
which has been the object of much
criticism on the part OF officials and
some jurists and the subject Of much
satisfaction to a large number Of
women.
LAS an example of the sort Of legis-
lation that looks toward the type Of
democracy with which this conference
has to do, the Gable act is not above re-
proach, but 1t is, from woman'S point
of view, a great step in advance. 1t
permits a woman citizen who marries
any alien eligible to citizenship to keep
her citizenship unless she makes dec
1T Is q significant fact that few, II
any, American women have exercised
the right to choose the nationality Of
the husband. Neither does our country
thrust or, If you prefer, confer upon
foreign woman who marrieS a United
States citizen this United States citi-
Zenship, but gives her the opportunity
to acquire it voluntarily by naturaliza-
ton.
THE Gable act does not, however, ex-
press complete independence, for under
it q woman married to an alien becomes
q different kind of citizen. She is
transferred into q naturalized citizen,
subject to q presumption of a loss OF
nationality when living out OF this
| country for a specified time. Under
the act, also, q woman married to an
alien ineligible to citizenship becomes
an alien and remains so while the mar
riage lasts and how much longer no
official yet seems ready to say.
X
THE United States is by no means
the first government to recognize the
wife'S right to keep her own nation
atty. In retaining the wife as a ma
tional and in not thrusting its nation
atty upon a foreign wife, the Latin
! American republics-Argentina, Brazil
Chile, Colombia, Panama, Paraguay and
Uruguay-led the United States and
have gone farther than the United
States In recognizing the complete in
dependence OF women'S nationality.
Russia has followed, and more recently
| with limitations, France and her col
onies, and only the other day Cuba
joined this group of liberal countries
But the effect of the Gable act has been
far-reaching because the United States
Is still the land to which the alien
immigrant looks with eager eyes. When
We said that the foreign wife Of a
United States citizen shall not by the
mere fact OF her marriage become a
United States citizen, we Immediately
began to create number of stateleSS
women who could ask for diplomatic
protection, chiefly evidenced by pass
ports, neither from this Government
nor from their own.
4 r
"The outstanding countries that have
not taken steps to prevent stateleSSness
for its women are Great Britain and
all her dominions, Germany, the Neither
lands and Spain. There are still men,
berS of the British Parliament, or there
were a year ago, who looked with such
diSfavor upon our law as to express
hope amounting to a belief that our
Congress would soon repeal it. But
LII ElBldIlO anu OeTmaIly LHeTe Is an
insistent demand by large numbers of
women'S organizations for a change in
their law that will give them the rights
American women now have.
"Encouragingly increasing numbers
of countries are granting the right to
their women to say whether they will
or will not take the nationality of the
husband. Such choice may now be
made in Albania, Belgium, Esthonia,
France and her colonies, Guatemala,
Rumania, Jugoslavia and to a limited
extent in Egypt. Turkey, although
comforting its nationality upon the alien
woman who marries q Turk, has re-
Gently enacted law by which Turkish
woman can lose her nationality only as
a man does, by being released from it.
In this apparent confusion of laws
there will be noted a distinct trend
towards giving women the benefit of
that principle of nationality so elo-
quently stated by the Roman creator
and juriSt, Cicero, when he said, oh,
how admirable are our laws, and with
what God-like wisdom were they estap-
beginning Of the Roman name! ESpe-
cially the law that no one Of our people
can be a citizen of more than one city
and that no one can be COM
PEELED against his will to change his
city nor against his will to remain a
citizen Of any city. For these are the
finest foundations of our liberty, that
every individual should have 1t in his
power to retain or to abandon his
privileges"