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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 limited to the views expressed in the Notes of the Month," and in the unsigned article immediately following. NOTES OF THE MONTH The Feast of St. David. The return of our ancient national festival once more carries back our minds to the sixth century. When Dewi Sant and his followers built their little wooden or wattled Church in the Vale of the Roses by the wild Atlantic Coast in the land of Dyfed, they laid the foundations of the Welsh nation. If there had been no Dewi, there would have been no Teilo, no Padarn, and the three blessed visitors would never have carried their evangelic message in the people's own tongue into the cottages of the Cymric lands. Had Dewi never lived, although we may imagine that the Yellow Plague might have driven some priests and peasants into Armorica, yet they would harve carried no religious message there, and they would have soon been absorbed in its Romanised population. The religion and language of Brittany, no less than of Wales, are the fruits of David's devo- tion and labours. The Welsh Free Churchman who attends an Eisteddfod on St. David's Day is through Dewi Sant the true brother of the Breton maiden, who on St. Non's Day will lay her flowers on the tomb of Dewi's mother. When the Saint arose in Wales, our land was already nearly stifled under the clasical tradition. Whether the works that bear the name of Gildas emanated from one or two authors need not concern us here, but they prove clearly how strong the Roman tradition was at the time in Wales, and how fast it bound the nation to a dead past. If the spirit of Gildas had remained, the spirit of the Welsh Church that met Augustine at the Synod of the Oak, that Church would have left the Synod the humble handmaid of the Roman Churchmen, and Wales would have been converted into the strategical basis of Augustine and Theodore in their missionary enterprise. The courts of the Welsh princes and chiefs would have been crowded by Latin ecclesiastics, and the Welsh language, already full of Latin words, would in that critical hour of its infancy, have been com- pletely Latinised. But the Spirit of Dewi Sant triumphed. The Welsh Church refused all MARCH, 1922. demands for its submission, and for a century lived an isolated life, free to save Dewi's language and to teach his faith as he had taught it. At the end of the period a religious reconciliation came, and was no evil. The Welsh language, Welsh nationality, and the Welsh religious ideal had, how- ever, been saved, and the time had arrived for Wales to take its share in the common Christian life of Western Europe. Those cosmopolitans who argue that any kind of isolation is harmful should remember the past. When Gildas pleaded for the Roman ideal, he pleaded for something infinitely greater and grander thjan capitalistic civilisation or modem Imperialism. Yet had the Welsh Christians of the 7th century yielded to him, Wales a nation, the Welsh language, and Welsh tradition would have disappeared for ever from the face of the earth. A Scheme of Devolution. We readily admit that the small committee of the Welsh members elected last Session to draft a scheme of Home Rule which might ultimately issue in an agreed Bill which the Government would support, and to which it would give facilities, have done a great deal of work. Nevertheless, there is something pathetic in the manner in which they have bound themselves up with that almost absurd docu- ment-the report of the Speaker's Committee on Devolution, a document which most people who had seriously thought of the problem, had consigned long ago to the waste paper basket. We should have thought the Committee would have found a great deal more illumination and much safer guidance in some of the work of a former colleague of theirs, Mr. E. T. John, and they would have avoided many dangers and pit-falls if they had not carried out their investigations in the spirit of a college of cardinals, but had taken others than members of Parliament into consultation. We cannot but welcome one result of the publication of the Report, the action of the Union of Welsh Societies in insisting that this matter, after all, is one for the people generally, and in declaring that the