That keeps in memory her family designation and yet gives her children a chance to call themselves by the one name which is a sign of the family unity.

However the settlement may be made, the point is that such a vital question, entering into the legal signature for business purposes as well as into all social relationship, shall reach conclusion before the two enter upon the marriage bond.
=Shall the Wife Take the Husband's Nationality ?=--In the second place, there is now a question of nationality to be settled, a most important one in all its political and legal bearings.

The old law made a wife the subject of her husband's national law and took her automatically away from her own country if her husband was born and was citizen of another country.

The national allegiance of her birth and her family was thus automatically transferred to that of the man she had married.
The suffering of many a woman in the late war when her husband's national allegiance made her legally an "enemy alien" to her own beloved land has sharpened the claim that now, when women have the franchise, they should have complete choice of the body politic to which they owe allegiance.

If they wish to marry men of another country they shall have the determination of whether or not they shall become naturalized by his government or whether they shall keep political relation with their own native country.