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THE WELSH OUTLOOK The Editor does not necessarily identify himself with the opinions of contributors to "The Welsh Outlook." Editorial responsibility is litnited to the views expressed in the "[Notes of the Month," and in the unsigned article immediately following. NOTES OF THE MONTH The Peace At last the great event to which stricken Conference Europe has looked forward so long, has come to pass,the Peace Conference, or at least its preliminaries, has commenced. The problem before the delegates is the most difficult that statesmen have ever set themselves to solve-the reconciliation of individual nationalist aspirations with international needs, obligations, and conditions. The civilization that pro- duced the inferno of the last four and a half years was one of unfettered egoism and greed among nations and states, and our world was without any check on their evil play. During the hell, all nations professed their readiness to contribute, by effort and by sacrifice of claim and desire, to establish some effective and reliable system of world- government and authority as a security against the eternal clash of interests which we have known in the past. Such a system is the only possible safeguard against the two great dangers of our world at this moment-Financial Imperialism on the one hand and Bolshevism on the other. The evil in the soul of both of these horrors is the same- a materialist philosophy of life producing a complete inability to comprehend the great spiritual forces at work in the world. It is more than an accident that many of the great Imperialist financiers should belong to the same race as many of the Bolshevik leaders and that, intellectually at any rate, they should be of the same peculiar type in that race-being devoid of any conception of nationality and country (patria). In the fortune of no cause should Wales (herself, as H. G. Wells has pointed out, already a not undistinguished partner in a very im- perfect league of nations) be more interested than in that of a real League of Nations, as a means of vanquishing these twin evils-both utterly subversive of national existence and development. Indeed, the revival of healthy nationalisms, as recent events in Central Europe suggest, may ultimately prove to be the bulwark against World- Bolshevism. As a small nation whose whole history for centuries has been one of endeavour to save and establish a national inheritance, Wales is above all interested in this FEBRUARY, 1919. revival-in the securing for- all struggling nations-Irish, Poles, Czechs, Jugo-Slavs, Czecho-Slovaks, yes, even Masurians and Silesians-full justice and free develop- ment under conditions which will reduce to a minimum the temptation to the freed to forget his chains and to essay the enslavement of others. The only means of securing this is through an international authority with effective power to deal with tyrannies and autocracies wherever they raise their hideous heads. Welsh Home All serious Welsh nationalists, whatever Rule their particular interests may be, are gradually appreciating the fact that, for all Welsh matters, the main issue is that of autonomy- although many of them difficult at first to say Home Rule distinctly and easier to lisp the more harmless words Secretary for Wales." We have always supported the demand for the creation of a separate Welsh Office with powers and functions similar to the Scottish Office- but only as a temporary expedient and as a convenient means to the inevitable end. Separate treatment for Wales, in the real sense, in such matters as Public Health, Housing, Agriculture, and Education, can never be secured without the establishment of a Welsh Parliament com- posed solely of Welsh representatives giving their whole time to the considerat:on of these problems, and possessing complete powers for dealing with them. A hundred separate Welsh offices manned by the mrst efficient secretariats the world has ever seen ^an never relieve the Imperial Parliament, composed of over 700 members, of whom less than 40 are from Wales, of its congestion of business, and of its inherent incapacity (through lack of common knowledge) to understand the peculiar Welsh aspects of the myriad problems with which it will have to deal. On the other hand, the establishment of a Welsh Office may, merely by disentangling the Welsh from the English administration of these affairs, do something towards pre- paring the way for complete devolution.