“It is at no point a serious or searching analysis of the present situation in England as regards divorce.” R. D.
− Freeman 1:382 Je 30 ’20 330w Ind 102:370 Je 12 ’20 240w Lit D p116 S 18 ’20 1550w
“Mr Chesterton seems to imagine that divorce is now being advocated for its own sake. To forbid divorce and remarriage altogether, as a desperate remedy for extreme cases, is no more rational or humane than it would be to forbid surgery to all because most do not stand in present need of it.” Preserved Smith
− + Nation 110:827 Je 19 ’20 670w
“Mr Chesterton’s book is, like most of his work, delightfully amusing, and incidentally contains much good sense. But it is a far better treatise on marriage than on divorce. I object to divorce in the same sense as I object to surgery. But if we are to have surgery let us have it up to date and not as it was in 1800.” E. S. P. Haynes
− + Nation [London] 26:684 F 14 ’20 850w Review 3:132 Ag 11 ’20 320w Sat R 129:140 F 7 ’20 600w
“Save in a sort of dreadful desert which the reader enters about the middle of the book when he is taken through dreary tracts of guild socialism and over a waste marked ‘Superior attractions of the middle ages,’ the book is extraordinarily lively reading.”
+ − Spec 124:391 Mr 20 ’20 800w
“Mr Chesterton is cheerfully disinclined to subject his arguments to empirical tests. He starts with a number of definitions and then, having proved all the ramifications of his thought to be in accord with those definitions, regards the case as closed. Satisfied with his own logic Mr Chesterton conceivably may be; the reader’s satisfaction comes from the skill and surprise of the dialectic, from the ever-recurring paradox, from the humanity and good nature and good sense that often glint through the subtile fabric of wit.”
+ − Springf’d Republican p8 Je 7 ’20 750w