Welsh Journals

corruption. The subject is one of an unpleasant character, but it is one which, in the public interest, will one day have to be discussed. The fact that in a book written by a Member of Parliament the question is ignored must of necessity increase public suspicion. Mr. Edwards devotes his first chapter to the contro- versy over the Education Bill of 1902, and the Welsh education revolt that followed it. It was the occasion which brought his hero popularity. Had Mr. Lloyd George passed away after his heroic fight for justice and freedom in the South African war, he would have left behind him a name which the lovers of liberty would everywhere have respected, but which would not have appealed to the ordinary Britisher. In 1902 he took up a cause with which a large section of English public opinion keenly sympathised and, in consequence, obtained wider popularity. He became a possible English party leader. In his account of the educational controversy, Mr. Edwards identifies Mr. George's position with the old educa- tion policy of Dr. Dale and Mr. Chamberlain in the seventies. In fact, it was nothing of the kind. The old Noncon- formists stood for a purely secularist policy, -no religious teaching in the schools. And they justified the policy on the ground of the injustice of taking the ratepayers' money for the teaching of religious doctrine in which he might not believe. Mr. Lloyd George's policy was something quite different. He supported the teaching in the schools of the Bible undenominationally explained by an official syllabus. Give the children," he cried, the Bible if you want to teach them the Christian faith. Let it be expounded to them by the Founder. Stop the brawling of priests in and round the schools, so that the children may hear Him speak to them in His own words-Pray, silence for the Master." The words are eloquent, but to-day they ring hollow. The explanation of the Bible through the Catechism of the Church of England filled Mr. George with horror. He has lived to hear a distinguished Cal- vinistic Methodist Minister say that the words of the Sermon on the Mount are a mere counsel of impossible perfection. He has lived to pass Acts of Parliament under which Quakers have been sent to prison for following in the way that their conscience directed the Master's voice. And the irony of the situation has been increased by the fact that while the Welsh Free Churches have remained silent at this outrage on religious liberty, that old Noncon- formist cause, the championship of the oppressed. Conscience found a voice in Mr. George's opponent on the Education Bill, Lord Hugh Cecil. My personal sympathies are neither with the Quakers nor with the conscientious objectors, but justice compels me to say that in the treatment which they received, all Noncon- formist principles were shamefully trodden under foot. And there is a further point for consideration. Mr. George rested his case against Mr. Balfour's bill on the injustice of compelling Free Churchmen to pay rates for the teaching of religious dogmas in which they did not believe, but if the dogmas of the Church of England Catechism are repellent to Nonconformist, so is the teaching of the whole Bible to the free thinkers, and of the New Testament to the Jews, Yet Mr. George saw nothing wrong in com- pelling them to pay rates for purposes of which their conscience disapproved. The education agitation had behind it much enthusiasm and much eloquence, but it had, unlike the movement of the seventies, no logical principle. For this reason it missed success. When the Education Bill passed into law, Mr. Lloyd George rallied Wales to resist it, and Mr. Edwards devotes a chapter to the Education revolt. His summary of the achievement of his hero on this his last Welsh fight, is as true as it is eloquent- Mr. Lloyd George secured an unparalleled triumph. He welded the thirteen counties of Wales into such an homogeneity of policy and action as had never been known before. The geographi- cal barriers, which had so often constituted an insurmountable barrier to national unity, were broken down in the consciousness of a nation's honour, and in the passion of a common purpose. Not since the stirring times of Llewelyn-the last of the native princes of Wales-had the Welsh nation so unitedly arrayed itself under the banner of one leader as it did during the educational revolt under the successful and intrepid leadership of Mr. Lloyd George." "But what good came of it at last? said little Wille- mene. Mr. Edwards would be hard put to answer, as was old Caspar to reply to a similar question. The idea that under- lay the revolt was that Wales should have an educational system of its own; their idea was finally rejected by Mr. Fisher and Mr. Herbert Lewis, when in the last Education Act, Wales was again incorporated with England for the purposes of elementary education. The attempt to deprive Church schools of rate aid was ultimately crushed by the Law Courts in the famous Swansea case. It is true that a committee of the Board of Education was dignified with the name of a Welsh Board of Education," with a Welshman at the head of it, but Welsh education continued to be governed by the English Board. Regarded as a movement to destroy Church schools or to establish a national system of Welsh education, the Welsh revolt was a failure. Nevertheless it served a useful pur- pose in showing the union of all Wales in a political cause to be possible, and in reminding the world that the pro- blem of the Established Church in Wales was as acute as ever. The strangest fact about the Welsh revolt is the im- mediate disappearance from Welsh politics of its chief. His banner led the spears no more Among the hills of Wales." In the internal politics of Wales after that date, he played only a secondary part. In the agitation that preceded the passing of the Disestablishment Act, he took little share, and left the spade work to be done by Mr. McKenna and Sir Ellis Griffith. Tom Ellis had endeavoured to unite Wales and Ireland in a common struggle for freedom. From the Irish question Mr. Lloyd George for long held aloof, and finally entered into alliance with Sir Edward Carson. Mr. Edwards feels that his hero's action in abandoning the idea of a Welsh party calls for explanation. He finds the reason in the devotion of the Welsh peasantry to the Liberal party, and in the ambition of the Welsh M.P.'s, who would not submit to a self denying ordinance. The