94 Hattie Plum Williams 
desertion ; and in 2 cases, drunkenness. In 4 cases annullment is 
prayed because the marriage was obtained by fraud, three of the 
plaintiffs being husbands and one a wife. 
Several of these cases disclose peculiar customs which obtain 
among the Russian Germans. In one instance the husband 
claimed he had been cajoled into marriage by the defendant, rein- 
forced by her minister who threatened dire spiritual consequences 
if he did not marry the young woman, not on account of any 
illegal relations sustained but just on general principles. As the 
matter was purely one of overpersuading an unwilling suitor and 
involved no criminal action, the court disregarded this petition 
but granted a divorce on the charge of cruelty.°° In another 
case, the plaintiff was accused of being the father of the de- 
fendant’s unborn child, and on threat of prosecution went to 
Council Bluffs and falsified his age in order to secure a license. 
After marriage the wife confessed to having defrauded the plain- 
tiff, and two months later he sued for a divorce on the ground of 
his minority and of fraud in obtaining marriage. This case is 
typical of a certain small class of marriages where the parties com- 
mit perjury in order to carry out their plans, and the clerk’s office 
has no recourse on account of the characteristic American care- 
lessness concerning birth data. A people accustomed to the most 
elaborate and detailed system of records such as Russia employs, 
come to America, and, if the end in view demands it, falsify con- 
cerning such data with the happy consciousness that nothing will 
come of it. 
Another divorce petition throws an interesting side light upon 
Russian German customs. A young man in a neighboring state 
sent a ticket to a young woman in Russia in order that she might 
come to America to marry him. When the ticket arrived the 
young woman was married to another, and it was decided that a 
90 The petition for divorce filed in this case is an interesting commentary 
on the superstition of a simple-minded young foreigner, and of the man- 
ner in which matters relating to marriage among the Russian Germans 
are referred to the minister for final adjudication. The prompt appeal to 
the divorce court is also suggestive of how quickly the hope of escape 
through the civil authorities overcomes the victim’s fear of spiritual 
penalties. 
220 
