=Personal Choice in Marriage Has Now the Widest Range.=--One fact which many overlook when making estimates of the mistakes in marriage (and drawing therefrom dire prognostication for the future of the family in our country) is that personal choice among a circle of friends was not only never so free for young people but also never able to cover so wide a range of divergent national and racial backgrounds as in the United States. Marriages in this country often bridge or try to bridge a chasm between centuries of social development and continents of educational influence. It is estimated that of the 3,424 languages and dialects spoken in the world, about one-third, or 1,624, are spoken in some part of the American continent. The English language is spoken by more people than use either the German, Russian, French, Spanish, Italian, or Portuguese, but the 150,000,000 who thus preserve the "mother-tongue" of the early American settlers have to come into intimate contact with those of far different lingual background. This difference in language, which is found so often a barrier to unity between the respective parents of the young people who choose each other in marriage, is but a sign and symbol of deep-seated and ineradicable divergence in family tradition, in fashion of customary ways of living, in scale of moral values and in personal habits. It is rather a matter for astonishment that so many "mixed marriages" turn out well than that a minority prove disastrous. Mixed marriages will continue and with wider range of alignment in the future than in the past. That is inevitable with our increased complexity of life, which brings together in school and in labor, in social gatherings and in political association, all sorts and conditions of men, and women. Love not only laughs at prison bars, love scoffs at parental differences as well as at parental control. Yet is it true that wide divergence in family background is accountable for many of the tragedies of broken families after love has cooled and the facts of sober obligations incurred have become obvious.