'Pon my soul, my friends, I must congratulate you at least on this: that your generation has discovered and is not afraid to admit that a wife makes the truest comrade and the best guide an ambitious or a happy man can have. Indeed, it warms the heart to see such tributes paid to women as your great men have recently done.

See how many of your statesmen have said that but for the guidance of a woman's hand they would never have attained their high eminence in world affairs. Sir Austen Chamberlain, who is an aristocrat after mine own heart, has said: 'For thirty years my wife has been my inspiration. She has known every secret of my public life. She has sustained my courage, shared my hopes and sympathized with me in my anxieties.'

Mr. Baldwin has on more than one occasion said much the same thing about his own life partner; Lord Reading, when he closed his great years of service in troubled India, said that more than once would discouragement have overcome him but for 'the lady who stood by me when times were difficult and anxious.'

Yet another of your famous statesman who would never have reached to fame alone is the Marquess of Aberdeen, who has served his country as Governor-General of Canada and as Viceroy of Ireland during the latter's most troublesome years. The book most appropriately entitled, We Twa, of which he and his wife are joint authors, proclaims in every page the vital truth of the ancient saying that, 'Whoso findeth a good wife findeth a great thing.'

And in other realms than politics great or famous men have paid tribute to the white hands that guided their careers. John Galsworthy dedicated his Forsyte Saga to his wife, saying that without her encouragement, sympathy and criticism, he would never have won through to success. Even your amazing Mr. G. B. Shaw has for once been conventional enough to admit that he might perhaps have failed but for the help his wife had given him throughout his career.

My faith! I could go on quoting you instances by the yard of famous men who have said as much, but I find it difficult to choose among so many. Cromwell, that iron-hearted regicide, was never happy when parted from his wife; and she it was who once wrote those beautiful words to him: 'My life is but half a life in thine absence.' Lord John Lawrence, who helped to build our Empire in India, was once chaffed by his sister, who said that he could never rest for five minutes away from his wife's side. 'That was why I married her, madam,' he replied quietly.

But it is not in those great men, either past or present, or in their wonderful helpmates that I am most interested. My thoughts now, as always, fly to the man in the street, to the average British working or commercial man, to all those, in fact, who have found in marriage just the kind of companionship that they sought. Laurels of fame are perhaps not for them; they are not striving to reach the giddy heights of clangorous success, but in their struggles and their strivings they can hold on to a hand which is always ready to guide and to help. 'God must have loved the average woman: He made so many of them,' was said by a great philanthropist who knew how to appreciate the wonderful qualities of the quiet, everyday housewife who sits at home and ministers to the creature comforts of the man she loves, and while darning his socks weaves into the criss-cross threads thoughts of how best she can serve him with encouragement and advice.

She it is who makes this modern world of yours seem less drab, for she causes it to glow with the effulgence of her unselfishness. She is for ever planning ways and means to save her man from petty worries and irritating cares; she it is who puts heart into him when discouragement overtakes him; she who comforts him when sorrow and disappointment seem more than he can bear.

Then I pray you, charge your glasses, ye men of this Great and Greater Britain, and drink a loyal toast to your adorable womankind. You know as well as I do that without your loving wife life would indeed make a poor show for you. Without the ladies--God bless 'em!--this whole round earth of ours would lose all its sweetness, and we, poor male creatures, would lose all our self-respect if we had no one to stand by us and tell us what demmed fine fellows we really were.

I hate that stupid old proverb which says that familiarity breeds contempt; but all the same, I fear me, that it causes us to take for granted, or cease to appreciate at its just value, the constant care, the kindliness, the thoughtfulness wherewith our working life is made easier for us. Think back on the days of your honeymoon, my friends, and how exquisite seemed to you the thousand and one little attentions which your young wife already bestowed on you. Every time you found your slippers put to warm by the fire you felt a thrill of manly satisfaction and of pride in the choice you had made of a life's companion. Do not lose this great hold you have on happiness by ceasing to notice those small attentions after the first few years of marital contentment.

The love that prompts all those small attentions is the same to-day as it was in the days of your betrothal. Do not blind yourself to it and take too much for granted. She is always ready to share your sorrow and make it thereby but half a trouble, and by the same token she will double your joy by sharing it with you.

It is the unfortunate lonely bachelor who 'has no one to still him and therefore must weep out his eyes'.

And to put the matter in a more prosy way, let me assure you that two heads are always better than one, especially if that other head matures thoughts only of you. The wagon that is drawn in double harness will roll without a jolt on life's highway.