Welsh Journals

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D. ELWYN WILLIAMS: Born at Swansea; educated at Ystalyfera County School and University College, London. Assistant English Master at Cardiff High School. Interests lie in Military History, Armour, etc. Contributing four articles to The Army Quarterly, and has a book, Welsh Soldiers," ready for publication. ORIEL Malet Her literary agents, Messrs. A. P. Watt & Son, write As to the note about the author of A Welsh Childhood, I am afraid that all the information she wishes printed is that she is Welsh and was born and brought up in Wales. She has had the following books published — Trust in the Springtime (novel), My Bird Sings (novel), Margery Fleming, all by Faber." We may add that Miss Malet has won a major literary prize for her second book since this note came and wrote much before she was 21. RALPH EDWARDS: Keeper, Victoria and Albert Museum since 1937; Member of Advisory Committee for Art and Archaeology, National Museum of Wales. Author of various publications and numerous articles on pictures and decorative art. Editorial Comments-This Quarter's Quota. OBITUARY notices are among the most painful tasks an Editor has to perform. One Friday morning we had to write four versions of some length within a stipulated two hours. That duty done we vowed Never Again. For a periodical such as Wales it is doubly difficult to pay adequate tribute to departed friends. The reasons are obvious to sen- sitive persons. The Daily Press can deal with Deaths and Entrances rapidly, objectively, coldly, it can marshal the relative autobiographical facts and career details-it has them on tap in' the Library often, it is rumoured, the journalistic hacking is prepared beforehand in ample time -a set job for a man who specialises in glory and fame too late.' As a nation, we in Wales, too, in hamlet and market town, tend to value a man's qualities and praise his individual virtues only after he has gone out of our life. Perhaps it is a peculiarly Celtic trait. Old-fashioned parsons, those 'giants' of the Welsh Pulpit, could make villagers weep by their simple (or flowery) golden-tongued imagery and oratory-their frothy pomposity. Customs change. War, our ever-present troubled world, modernism have surely killed that Victorian tradition nowadays restraint, reticence are the order of the day with the children of God. We confess it is this deep feeling that words at a late date cannot com- pensate for honour during a lifetime that has compelled us to be silent over the gaps that have occurred in the ranks of Welsh writers in the war years. Lamentably, the list mounts up. Geraint Goodwin, Alun Lewis, E. Prosser Rhys, Caradoc Evans, and now Ernest Rhys-all are names that our growing literary movement could ill afford to lose. I was in Ireland when E.R." died. On returning I found the customary card (no mourning black) propped upon the mantelpiece IN MEMORY OF ERNEST RHYS MAN OF LETTERS & POET DIED IN LONDON, MAY XXV, NINETEEN HUNDRED AND FORTY-SIX IN HIS EIGHTY-SEVENTH YEAR. BRIAN RHYS MEGAN MAURICE HILL STELLA RHYS 29, Rusholme Road, London, S.W. 15.