Welsh Journals

vicinity. Are the people from afar to be permitted to go on exploiting our local resources-and us-for ever? Are we Welshmen content to allow the precious waters of our country to be continually taken from us and that we ourselves and the land of our fathers should for ever go into captivity to the non-resident capitalist merely for lack of knowledge as to how best to put to a profitable use the valuable natural resources with which Nature has so richly endowed us ? If not, then, surely it is high time that a halt was called in this amazing neglect of a great national asset. What a magnificent opportunity is here for some prosperous and patriotic Welshman to do for the important subject of Hydro-electrics (and, so, for his native land and the British Empire) what rich men in the United States of America have not been slow to do in, and for, their country. A well-equipped and well-endowed department for teaching and for research, under the direction of the ablest authority on the subject who can be attracted to -fill the post, would form a great asset and a tower of strength to a reconstructed and enlarged University of Wales. Meantime the new Technical Institutes shortly to be started in North and South Wales should be able to do much to repair past neglect of a subject of much vital local interest. Such a new branch of study might not unfitly be taken up in Wales, for the means for promoting it are, as. London. MORAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC To the Editor, Sir,-Is the Liquor Traffic a thing to be regulated or a thing to be destroyed ? No doubt Principal Rees's answer would be that the Drink Traffic should first be brought under control (so-called) through State Purchase and in time destroyed. But is this the way we should deal with a venomous snake, or with sin and evil ? Would we not rather contribute our share (as someone has suggested) towards giving the Trade a decent burial, in the way of granting some compensation as an act of grace or equity ? It is for us teetotallers to have deep convictions and dauntless courage, and to force our demands on our politicians and not seek a way which a large body of the public and many politicians, are ready to adopt." Surely if one man, as we have before this seen, can impose his will on a mass of people, a compact body of earnest men and women can do so. Do not let us have in Wales at any rate a Liquor Control Board, but rather a Liquor Destroying Board. It passes my comprehension how a temperance advocate of such virility as Principal Rees should be ready to temporise and compromise in such a matter. State Purchase is a counsel of faint-heartedness and despair. Principal Rees in his reply to my letter is very creditably anxious to seize upon points of agreement between the two schools, but it must be said that he was not so careful of the feelings of the anti-purchase section in his original article, a reprint of which has been put on sale, and is no doubt exercising its influence on numerous unsophisticated minds at the present moment. He is anxious to find a common policy in face of the powerful enemy, but it is evident such policy is to include State Purchase with its consequent State Liquor-making and selling. It would have been easy to find a common policy but for this State-purchase apple of discord. It is Principal Rees's friends that recklessly and without sufficient thought Criccieth, August 19, 1918. THE WELSH OUTLOOK we have seen, fairly abundant throughout the country Some of the finest reservoirs and dams in Great Britain are to be found at Vyrnwy, at Rhayader, at Pont-yr-Alltwen, and on the slopes of the Old Red Sandstone hills of mid- Wales. Though we cannot possess plant of 30,000 h.p. such as is to be found at Kinlochleven, where there is a constant stream of pilgrims from far Japan to see and study it, there is considerable plant at Uanberis, and yet another installation in the Snowdon district, whilst extremely interesting examples of low-head power-all of them within easy reach of Wales,-may be found at Chester and at Worcester. And each of these works and installations is worthy of close study as a basis for the wider knowledge of water-power problems. At a time when Reconstruction with a view to meeting the needs of the future, whether in Education or in Industry is admittedly-after the winning of the War-the most pressing problem of the day, and when the captains of industry are seriously concerned as to how-with a greatly reduced man-power­-they will be able to cope with the enormous volume of work in almost every field and depart- ment of life which will await them after the War, surely it is the height of folly to neglect the contribution which the forces of Nature-the now wasted waters of Wales -all, capable of making to the solution of many of such problems. Alfred T. Davies. CORRESPONDENCE introduced the same and it is for them to withdraw it. Would not Local Option minus State Purchase be an improvement on existing conditions and has it been given a trial? Local Veto at any rate is of the essence of Prohibition, while State Purchase amounts to State Prostitution. Again, I do not see why some of our Welsh M.P.'s should not introduce a bill of General Prohibition with Local Contracting-out at the present moment, if only tentatively. Our objection to State Purchase is not, as Principal Rees suggests, one of details, but a vital and fundamental one-it is a question between thoughtless toleration and deliberate commission and this is the cardinal argument that underlies this correspondence. I cannot admit I misapprehended Principal Rees when I made him say that toleration of a wrong is worse than initiation (the last word appeared in the Principal's letter through a printer's error as imitation.") These are his own words which are based on a self-evident fallacy and which as I said before it is fortunate our Judges and Courts of Law would not dream of acting upon To permit or to acquiesce in a reprehensible course of action thoughtlessly or carelessly is more culpable and dangerous than to undertake it oneself." Very heroic-sounding, certainly, but not sound. State Purchasers are making two fatal mistakes-they are seeking Prohibition from within the business at the cost of turning us all into publicans, and they are seeking the good and clean end of Prohibition or Abolition through the evil and unclean means of State Liquor-selling. That would, in Scripture language, be doing evil that good may come. Let us therefore choose the straight path though it be rugged and steep. Ffordd unionaf er mor arw I ddinas gyfaneddol yw." E. Lloyd Owen. P.S.-I would have liked to say a word in reply to the comment of Nationalist in his letter The British not a Christian State," but I may be permitted to do so aga,n.-E. Lt. 0,