at this present time.  I have known marriage after marriage wrecked by the almost unbelievable ignorance that has been present on both sides.  I say both sides.  First of all, there is the girl.  To her, marriage comes sometimes as so great a shock that her whole temperament is warped and embittered by it.  Then there is the man, equally ignorant—­very often, probably less ignorant of himself, but equally ignorant of her—­not realizing how she should be treated.  They are often quite ignorant of each other’s views on marriage; of what sort of claims they are going to make on each other; what each thinks about the duty of having children.  These elementary facts of human life, which must confront those who marry, are faced by them without any kind of preparation, without the most rudimentary knowledge of each other’s point of view.  And that there are so many happy marriages in spite of all this makes one realize how extraordinarily loyal, fine and courageous, on the whole, human nature is.

Only the other day I was speaking in a town in the north of England on this very subject, and I got a letter afterwards to say that the writer had very greatly enjoyed my address at the time.  She had found it, she assured me, inspiring and elevating.  But she felt bound to write and tell me afterwards (what she was sure would both shock and distress me) that she had found that some of the people in my audience were actually acting on what I said!  I suppose every public speaker comes up against that sort of thing sometimes—­the calm assurance that you are merely talking in the air and have not the slightest desire that anyone should act on what you say.  So this lady wrote to say that, though she and her husband had both been greatly impressed by what I said, they were horrified to find that, as a result, people were actually discussing with one another, before they married, certain points which she mentioned to me and which she said they ought never to discuss until they were married.  Is it not amazing that anyone should seriously contend that it is better to arrive at an understanding with the person he or she is about to marry after marriage than before?  That people who would not dream of betraying anyone into any kind of contract about which they were not satisfied that its terms were understood should be willing to betray others—­I deliberately call it a betrayal—­into a contract of such infinite importance, and positively desire that they shall be ignorant of its nature?

It really seems sometimes as if pains were positively taken to mislead those who are going to be married.  One of the most amazing statements on this subject, for instance, is contained in the marriage service of the Church of England, where the bride and bridegroom are told that marriage was ordained that “such persons as have not the gift of continency might marry and keep themselves undefiled members of Christ’s body.”  That there should be anyone in the