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THE NEATH EISTEDDFOD: SOME REFLECTIONS HE 1918 Eisteddfod has come and it has gone. What 1 are we to think of it ? The purely local aspect of the question is of little importance. The various officials and their army of enthusiastic helpers may be allowed ungrudgingly to bask in the sunshine of mutual congratula- tion. For Wales, the question raises a study of values (from which these personal factors must be eliminated), and what we may think of the Neath Eisteddfod will there- fore be tinged by the views we may hold as to the ultimate ideals and objects of our national festival. Too many lovers of the Eisteddfod are content to accept each succeeding meeting just as they find it, and to express their appreciation annually in gushing, uncritical terms. This complacent frame of mind bespeaks an absence of any clear ideas as to the objects which the Eisteddfod could and should be made to subserve. And therein lies a danger. The unique character of the festival tends in itself to the perpetuation of this uncritical mood, for there exists no parallel institution in other countries which might simplify the process of inspection by providing comparative data. Occasionally, it is true, a successful invasion by English choirs acts as a check upon our habit of easy satisfaction, but the effects of the shock very quickly pass into limbo. More rarely still, some of our Welsh choirs visit other countries but since the spacious days of Caradog the experiences so obtained have been on the whole somewhat chilling, and have proved to be short lived. The truth is that the only permanent test really open to us is, as already suggested, our own conception of the ideals and possibilities of the Eisteddfod. And this test should be honestly applied year in year out. But the average Eisteddfodwr-genial soul-is rarely inclined to enter upon the exercise of comparing the actual with the potential. If proof of this were needed, it was abundantly supplied by the enthusiasm displayed at Neath and by the total absence of anything approaching critical reviews of the proceedings in the whole of the Welsh Press. Indeed, the attitude of the Welsh Press towards the Eisteddfod is one of the most depressing features of the situation. The South Wales dailies gave what must be regarded in the circumstances as a fairly liberal amount of space to recording the actual proceedings at Neath. If, however, a young or an old "lienor" wishes to see a verbatim copy of the adjudications on, let us say, the Pryddestau submitted for the crown, or the Awdlau submitted for the chair, he must needs turn to the small Welsh weeklies-Y Brython and Y Darian. This is to deprive a people who dearly love their literature of a source of educational edification. Or, again, if a lover of music desires to compare his own impressions of the musical standards attained at the Eisteddfod with those of an expert and experienced critic, he must forsake his local journals and rely upon the brilliant correspondent of the Manchester Guardian-which after all is a paper which is under no special obligation to the teeming thousands of South Wales. Now, is this as it should be? Does not the daily Press of Wales owe it to the nation to do all it can (and that would be a great deal) to make each succeeding Eisteddfod a rallying point of real educational worth in the departments of literature, music, and art ? The Neath Eisteddfod suggests a further reflection. Is it altogether an advantage to endeavour to attract to these festivals such large crowds of people? This un- fortunately is mainly a financial problem. The prime duty of the local committees seems to be to avert at all costs a financial loss. In this effort they are warmly seconded by the National Eisteddfod Association-which expects to pocket one-half of any surplus that may be pro- duced. Now if the Eisteddfod were simply a commercial proposition, no one could cavil at this. But no devout Welshman would concede the point that his great national festival for the encouragement of music, literature, and art, exists primarily for money-making purposes. Yet a visitor who should chance to meet the jubilant Neathites during the Eisteddfod week, or who perused the flamboyant paragraphs on the financial success at Neath with which the Welsh Press is studded, would be strongly impelled to conclude that the main concern of the venture was after all to pile up the cash receipts. In theory our visitor would, of course, be wrong, for the Eisteddfod was never meant to be a glorified fete. But it is a matter of some importance that the devout Welshman should take steps to ascertain the extent of the gulf which is fixed in this matter between theory and practice. The financial basis of the Eisteddfod should be at once over- hauled. This goes to the heart of Eisteddfod reform. There are serious grounds for thinking that on the present basis the temptation to sacrifice excellence to popularity too often prevails. The financial bogey hovers over the quality and character of the subjects chosen for com- petition (which is a fundamental disability) as well as over the manner of conducting the proceedings. It tends to defeat all the highest and best that the Eisteddfod stands for and even creates a false sense of the extent to which the Eisteddfod exerts any influence whatsoever. It is illusory to suppose that the Neath Eisteddfod brought one ray of joy, or created a healthier appetite for Welsh literature, or a truer appreciation of music, or a nobler con- ception of the spirit of nationalism to morer than one-half of those who formed the crowds at Neath. Why? For the simple physical reason that they could neither see nor hear, nor enter the crowded pavilion. Aristotle held that no state could be healthy which had more than ten thousand citizens. One wonders similarly whether an Eisteddfod can be really healthy if more than ten thousand are gathered together. At any rate it is perfectly obvious that there is a far better chance of ministering to ten thousand earnest, enthusiastic, and comfortably accommodated listeners than to twenty thousand equally earnest and enthusiastic men and women who owing to sheer human limitations find themselves compelled to return to their homes dejected in body and in spirit and without having experienced a single joyful moment through- out the livelong day. Whether the academic standard of the programme should be raised, or whether two or three sectional meetings can be held concurrently in separate meeting places, or whether the festival can be spread over a larger period, e.g., eight or ten days-these are some questions that await discussion. And there are others. Nid da lie gellir gwell" X.