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CYLCHGRAWN LLYFRGELL GENEDLAETHOL CYMRU THE NATIONAL LIBRARY. OF WALES JOURNAL VOLUME II. Summer, 1942 NUMBERS 3 & 4. THE CONTRIBUTION OF WALES TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES.' The proud claim was made in the United States Senate by Senator John Sharp Williams of Mississippi (and it was duly entered in the Congressional Record) that no nation in proportion to its size had contributed more to the development of the United States than had the Welsh. Whether this claim can be justified or not, it would, perhaps, be invidious to argue in any case it would be impossible to decide. For the greatest episode in the development of the United States is the epic struggle involved in subjugating the wilderness of a whole continent, and in this struggle there took part not only the famous men, whom it is fitting that we should praise (as Ecclesi- asticus tells us to do), but also those who have left no memorial, who are perished as though they had never been, and their children after them Yet these nameless ones brought to their task the virtues of courage and of industry, and they handed on to their descendants a tradition of sound living, and in a final reckoning no contribution to the growth of a nation is greater than that. But how one is to measure it is another matter, not to speak of deciding between the relative contributions of the various national groups. Nevertheless one cannot but be surprised at the part played in the outstanding events of American history by men and women of Welsh I The substance of a lecture delivered in the Course in the History of the United States of America for Teachers in Wales, organised by the Board of Education, and held at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, September 8 to ¡Z, 1941,