Welsh Journals

Letter from America ELUNED ROBERTS IT IS ALMOST A YEAR since I received from you a receipt for my sub- scription to WALES with an added note of recognition. I must confess, though you'd hardly guess it from my dilatory acknowledgement, that it produced quite a fillip of satisfaction among us and it set my parents to volleying fresh reminiscences for several happy hours. For that I thank you and by this date add further thanks for the renewing experience that each month brings in the copies of Wales. From the first number it has been interesting, stimulating, amusing, thoughtful, passionate, compassionate, dispassionate, minimally sentimental (a healthy achievement)— in short, you are doing right well in mirroring the mind, the heart and body of Wales and its people. I wish your publication a long and prosperous career, and really there's no reason why it should not be with all the diversity of character and activity that are the quintessence of Wales. While American publications offer scant news on Wales, thanks to the local Welsh papers, the B B C and now WALES, my parents and I manage to keep fairly well informed. Sadly enough, what makes international news regarding Wales is not the creative, representative incident but such delinquent juvenilia as was reported recently in Time concerning the bravado of a few nationalists. The article evoked two distinct reactions among intelligent American readers in this area-that of outright amusement and that of disillusion. 'I thought Wales was a mature nation was a revealing remark. ('A mature nation', mind you, and there are those few clamoring to be acknowledged as such!) You see, over here we are inclined to equate nationalism with the underdeveloped countries like Africa, and while achievement of it is a necessary step in progress for them, it is felt that old experienced people like the Welsh should be leaders in internationalism (and so they are, witness Llangollen). It comes then as a bit of a shock to learn that a people traditionally self-effacing suddenly (it seems) turns the table and puts self-interest above its mission to the world. Not that self-interest is wrong (Welsh self-interest needs more self-propulsion), but that in this case it appears to be overbalanced on its side of life's equation at a time when the needs of the world are calling for more self-discipline and sacrifice. All this adds up to the problem of what a nation really is. I should like to have heard Mr Gwynfor Evans' views while he was junketing in this country. None of the newspapers and magazines that come my way reported any of