Welsh Journals

THOMAS FRANCIS ROBERTS, 1860-1919. By David Williams. University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 1961. Pp. 48. The reader of that now somewhat dated but still indispensable history of the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, remembers, perhaps, two things about the man who was its second principal and that for no less than the record period of twenty-eight years. He will recall the grave, melancholy-looking figure of the photograph, typically Edwardian in appearance and in pose, and also the glowing words of appreciation of the distinguished English scholar, C. H. Herford. Otherwise, T. F. Roberts is for most of us a dim and little-known historical figure, over-shadowed by the more robust personalities of Thomas Charles Edwards on the one hand and J. H. Davies on the other. Even Professor David Williams, with his remarkable gift for acquiring intimate knowledge of those about whom he writes, tells us that Roberts was not an easy man to know. Yet he sketches for us quite firmly in this short study a portrait of both the man and his times, which were vital years in the development of Welsh education and, in particular, in the growth of Aberystwyth as a university college. T. F. Roberts emerges as one who is significant for what he was rather than for what he said or did. He was a typical pre-1914 Welsh Non- conformist Liberal, devout in his simple, fervent Baptist faith, devoted to the cause of equality of educational opportunity of which he was himself such a noble example. His natural reserve and caution were often interpreted as aloofness and timidity, and it is not surprising that he should have made little impact upon the majority of students, who like their principals colourful. But Professor Williams reminds us that there was more to T. F. Roberts than his public mien would have us suppose. Academically, he was daring enough when it came to creating new departments of study. Morally, his steadfast courage, in conduct as well as in public utterance, was never shown to better advantage than in his handling of some of the townspeople of Aberystwyth whose Germano- phobia was vented upon the distinguished member of the College staff, the linguist Hermann Ethe, at the beginning of the war of 1914. Temperamentally, however, Roberts was ill-suited to the burden of administration and so to be an effective leader in Welsh education. His death at a comparatively early age at least spared him the ordeal of having to cope with the revolutionary situation that developed in Aberystwyth immediately after the end of the first World War. This short study has grown out of a lecture given at the College by Professor David Williams to celebrate the centenary of the principal's birth. It must have been a delight to listen to as it moved with the deceptive ease of the skilled practitioner along the course of T. F. Roberts's life, relating each phase of it to the general features of Welsh national developments in his day, and the whole enlivened here by a