Welsh Journals

WELSH NATIONALISM AND MR. LLOYD GEORGE'S SPEECH THE question which I asked last year, Will Wales get Home Rule?" remains still in doubt. A great forward movement has no doubt been made in the last few months. The gathering at Llandrindod in May has revealed the fact that a strong passion for freedom still exists in Wales. On the other hand, it has been made equally clear that not only are strong forces ranged against the proposal, but that the Government and most of the Welsh M.P.'s are exceedingly lukewarm on the subject. What is perhaps even more serious is that, for the moment, the whole subject of nationalism in the British Isles is under a cloud. The Cymru Fydd movement took its origin in the great rally of Welsh Nationalism to Mr. Gladstone over the Irish question. Wales in 1886, as Tom Ellis said, saw the wreckers' lights and shunned them." Religious bigotry, racial prejudice, sectarian animosity, all were used to lure the Welsh ship on to the rocks of re-action, and they were used in vain. In realising her duty to a fellow Celtic nation, Wales recovered her own soul, and for a moment she seemed about to recover her national heritage, -a place among the nations. But speedily the dream vanished. The leaders of the national movement in Wales sank under what a writer in a recent number of the Welsh Outlook calls the domination and damnation of the English party system." How absolute and complete has this subjection become has been proved by the attitude of the Welsh party during the last twelve months. This subjection was shewn when they allowed the Parliament- ary Reform Bill to leave the House of Commons without any attempt to obtain for Wales a Parliamentary repre- sentation proportionately equivalent in point of numbers to that granted to Scotland and Ireland on the ground of nationality, and without securing independent Parliament- ary representation for the Welsh University. It was shewn again, when the same M.P.'s, who know perfectly well that in matters of education Wales demands autonomy, allowed Wales once more to be grouped with England for the purposes of education. But most of all was it shewn when the Irish policy of Gladstone and Ellis was abandoned, and the Welsh Members allowed Home Rule to be shelved and Ireland to be ruled by the sword. I do not wish to underrate the difficulties in which the Government has been placed through the hostile attitude which the Sinn Fein party has taken up to the War. Nothing, however, can justify Welsh Liberals in their betrayal of Liberal principles and their shameless capitula- tion to the Junkers of Ulster. So far as Welsh Home Rule is concerned, this betrayal is having the worst consequences. It is a moral impossibility for men who are engaged on coercing one Celtic country and suppressing one Celtic language to wax enthusiastic about the liberation of another Celtic land. The fact was, alas too apparent in the speech on Federal Home Rule which the Prime Minister made to Lord Brassey's deputation. It is no pleasure for me to criticise Mr. Lloyd George, especially in days like these. I admit fully that he has rendered inestimable services to the Empire and to civilisation at this world crisis. But I would remind my readers of Aristotle's saying, that both Plato and Truth were his friends, and that when the two unhappily differed, he preferred to follow Truth. Mr. Lloyd George's position, I further allow, is a difficult one. He has thought fit for the purpose of carrying on the War to ally himself with men like Lord Milner and Lord Curzon, Mr. Balfour, and Sir Edward Carson, men who have spent all their political lives in fighting Nationalism and Liberty. In so doing he has given his hostages to the party of reaction, and he is unable to speak as he would once have spoken in the days that are past. Yet, when every allowance is made, the speech to the Brassey deputation was a deplorable failure to realise even the professed ideal of the War. It bore a painful resemblance to the speeches in which politicians in the days before militant tactics commenced bowed out deputa- tions which came to plead for women suffrage. In words the Premier proclaimed himself a federalist. He allowed that both in Scotland and Wales, the change is demanded, but he insisted that England required conversion. This statement for two reasons can only be described in Domine Sampson's favourite expression as pro- digious." In the first place England, we are told, is at war to liberate little nations. One of its war aims accord- ing to Mr. Balfour is the highly laudable one of securing not autonomy, but absolute independence for the Czechs of Bohemia. Can it seriously be supposed that England, while ready td wage war for the independence of Bohemia, is unwilling to grant to Wales the same amount of autonomy as Bohemia enjoyed, on paper at least, before the War commenced. (I say on paper," because under a military government like that of the Hapsburgs local autonomy must necessarily be a shadow). But, if England requires education, surely it is not for Welshmen or other supporters of federalism to undertake the task. It is for the Government to explain to the English people the local application of the principles for which the War is being waged. On one other point taken by Mr. George at the Brassey interview a word must be said. He asked the deputation what it proposed to do for Ulster. A protest must be made against the identification of the national claims of Wales and Scotland in the sectarian wrangle that divides the Celts of North-east Ulster from the Celts of the rest of Ireland. I describe the Ulstermen as Celts, because they are Celts, being mostly immigrants into Ireland from the Gaelic portions of Scotland. In saying that the Ulstermen are Gaels and Celts I do not deny that a good many Englishmen were among the planters sent to Ireland in the seventeenth century. But Englishmen in Ireland soon get merged in the Celts of the population. The descendants of Cromwell's soldiers in Tipperary are probably all Nationalists or Sinn Feiners to- day. The difficulty has come from the Scotch settlers,