Welsh Journals

encouraged, so that there are now more Welsh-speaking people alive than ever before (though the proportion of the total population is still declining). The BBC has a flourishing Welsh service and a Broadcast- ing Council for Wales. Semi-official bodies like the Arts Council do their best for Wales, and the senior civil servant in Wales, a Scotsman, has given much plea- sure by taking the trouble to learn Welsh. Since 1950 there has been a Minister for Welsh Affairs (only a minor portfolio, to be sure, held at present by the Minister for Housing and Local Government). Generous State aid has been given to the Welsh national youth movement, which has been pre-eminent in its services to Welsh self-confidence. There has been some decentralisation of Government Departments, so that a Whitehall in embryo is already forming in the fine civic centre at Cardiff. All in all, with a steady liberalisation of English attitudes and a notice- able growth of Welsh interest, it seems improbable that the present re- lationship between the two countries will remain inviolate. It is true that the existing system works well enough: Wales has her worries and has suffered her tragedies, but relatively few of them can honestly be laid at the door of English rule. It is perfectly arguable that greater auto- nomy for Wales would be a retrograde step, that even the appointment of a Secretary of State for Wales would only lead to tiresome adminis- trative complications, that anyway there is no Welsh Civil Service capable of supporting an indigenous administration, that the world has troubles enough already. Few Welshmen, it must be admitted, actually suffer from the English presence; and many thousands benefit. But Wales has always been a country of metaphysicals, and in a way the root cause of all these controversies is a conflict between the spiritual and the material: between the almost mystical determination of a small, poor rugged country and the brute strength of its mangificient neigh- bour. Skimble-skamble stuff Welsh nationalism may be, tedious as a tired horse the arguments of Welshmen, lukewarm the enthusiasm with which we await new translations of the glorious Welsh classics, hearty the greeting we Londoners give the stream of talented Welsh emigres: but who would happily watch such brave instincts suppressed, or see so many centuries of struggle end in the drab cul-de-sac of uniformity ?