2. Racial Attitude toward Marriage.--The racial factor is important in desertion. Not only the individual's own background, but the attitude of the people whence he sprang toward the sanctity of marriage, toward the position of women, and toward the importance of restraint in sexual relations, will have an effect upon the desertion rate of a given racial group. A study was recently made of 480 deserters known to the New York Charity Organization Society in 1916-17 whose nationality was given. The results in percentage form are given for what they may be worth, compared with the same percentage in 2,987 families of known nationalities which were under care for all causes during the same year. NATIONALITY OR RACE | |Per cent |Per cent |among 2,987 Race or place of birth |among 480 |families under |deserters |care for all | |causes --------------------------------------------------- United States--white | 30.6 | 29.7 United States--colored | 11.2 | 5.6 Irish | 9.7 | 14.7 Other British | 5.0 | 4.7 German | 6.2 | 6.2 Italian | 20.2 | 28.0 Austrian | 5.5 | 4.8 Russian | 2.8 | 1.0 Polish | 3.3 | 1.2 Other | 5.5 | 4.1 ---------------------------------------------------- | 100.0 | 100.0 3. Community Standards.--It cannot be too emphatically stated that any tendency in the community to belittle or ridicule the estate of matrimony has a definite cumulative effect on desertion. The "when a man's married" series in the comic supplements, certain comic films in the moving picture shows, the form of drama popularly called "bedroom farce" are examples of these destructive forces. Most of the people who laugh at them accept them as a humorous formula and are not seriously affected by them; but their educational effect on young people is bound to be bad and false to the last degree. In so far as they overemphasize romantic love and disparage conjugal love, the theater and the popular press do this generation great disservice. Another way in which the community may affect the popular conception of marriage is in the administration of civil marriage. Lack of care in enforcing the laws and lack of gravity in performing the ceremonies may have a decided reaction on respect for those laws and for the institution itself. Similarly, the administration of divorce laws may affect the popular conception of marriage. One entire neighborhood condoned the situation in which a deserted wife immediately went to live with another man, on the ground that "if they had been rich, they could have got a divorce."