Nationality of Married Women

Nationality is the relation one bears to one's country. The relation involves mutual obligations and rights - the obligation on the part of nationals to love their country, to obey its laws, to promote its advancement, and sometimes to give up even life for its sake; the obligation on the part of government to adequately maintain conditions so that its nationals will be protected in their lives and property at home and abroad to the end that they may enjoy peace and prosperity and attain their own highest development. A government and each of its nationals has the right to claim from the other the fulfillment of the obligation incurred by the relationship. Even primitive tribes have demanded redress for violation of the rights of its members, and nations with greatest prestige are most insistent upon proper treatment of its nationals, sending their flags when necessary to protect their nationals.Largely, almost universally in the past, governments - have not regarded the nationality of women as a direct relation between them and their country, but have struck at the closeness of the bond by making their relation to country insecure in that upon marriage to a foreigner the relation ended. Whatever is fine, whatever is beautiful, whatever is ennobling in patriotism has, in the case of women, been treated lightly by governments in that the sacredness of the bond has not been recognized as in the case of men.An examination of the laws of some eighty-five countries set forth in the following pages discloses the effect of marriage upon nationality - the overwhelming majority of countries in which a woman's nationality is dependent in whole or in part upon the nationality of her husband.