Welsh Journals

parties and of all the denominations. It is the clearing house for all who are keenly interested in the social welfare of the whole of Wales. No resolutions on any public questions are submitted at any of the sessions or meetings of the school. Nevertheless, since its foundation in 1911, the School has done quietly most excellent work. This year, we understand, there are to be some new and arresting features, of which more will be heard later. One of the guiding principles of the promoters is that every question dealt with shall be in the hands of an acknowledged expert. And the principle has been most rigidly adhered to in the compiling of the 1919 programme. For instance, THERE is no doubt that at the present moment Mr. Lloyd George is the hero of Wales. And Wales is right proud of his great deeds. He has been the central civil figure of the greatest war in history, and he has bfen the victor. Had he been severed by birth and language, politics and religion from the bulk of the Welsh peoplei^had he been a Welsh aristocrat standing for all those causes against which in the past the Welsh demo- cracy has protested, he would still have been a popular man in Wales to-day but when Welshmen remember that the statesman whose fame has spread over Europe was reared in a cottage home in North Wales, that he won his early fame by his championship of their religious grievances in a hostile and cynical Parliament, that his states- manship, before it found a field in the high politics of Europe, was exerted in the relief of poverty and distress, they feel for him an affection and a loyalty, such as they have felt for no other leader of their generation. But is this fame assured for all time ? Was the Welsh Minister right who foretold that, in the St. David's Day banquets of the future, the orator will mention Arthur and Glyndwr, but will reserve his finest periods for one greater than Arthur or Glyndwr, — the hero of the war against Kaiserism? It may seem ungrateful not to join at least on the present occasion in a similar burst of eulogy, and were Mr. Lloyd George's public life closed, it might be seemly to dwell only on his great achievement. But the end is not yet. Mr. Lloyd George remains the leading figure in the Empire's politics, and his future is still his to make or to mar. It will therefore be well to view calmly the position in which he stands to-day. To have steered an Empire successfully through a great war will bring to any states- man a momentary popularity, but the popularity is not always lasting, and does not always guarantee a brilliant place in history. Liverpool and Castlereagh guided England through the later stages of the Napoleonic war to the glories of Waterloo, but Liverpool is to-day utterly forgotten, and the name of Castlereagh is remembered with execration. Chamberlain in more recent days carried Housing in the Rural and in the Industrial areas of Wales is entrusted to Mr. Edgar L. Chappell, from whom an authoritative statement may be confidently expected as to the present position of this most vital matter. Then "The Problem of the Adolescent" is in the capable care of Major Edgar Jones, M.A., Dr. Abel J. Jones, M.A., and Mr. John Howell. And who better than Professor W. J. Gruffydd, M.A., to deal with the topic of The Welsh Peasant and National Ideals?" We wish the Welsh School of Social Service the success which such a sorely- needed undertaking deserves, and we shall watch its pro- ceedings with real interest. THE OUTLOOK THE FAME OF THE PRIME MINISTER. the South African war to a successful termination and acquired a momentary popularity. His best friends, however, will now allow, that his fame would have stood higher, if he had never come into collision with Paul Kruger. Of England's great war ministers, Chatham alone has remained a name of inspiration, for he in truth was the founder of the British Empire. Yet even Chatham's fame is to-day sullied by the fact that, if he created the British Empire, he also saved Prussianism in its infancy, and sowed the seeds of the late Armageddon. The question whether his leadership in the great war and the great treaty-making, brilliant and resourceful as it doubtless was, will secure for Mr. Lloyd George a place among the immortals depends on the way in which events shape themselves in the future. If the war drums in Europe are silent for ever or even for a century, if the League of Nations becomes a sovereign international authority. making for righteousness and peace, if demo- cracy becomes fairly established in Europe, and solves the economic questions which threaten the maintenance of civilisation, then Mr. Lloyd George will be remembered for generations as one of the greatest benefactors of humanity. But if the treaty of Versailles proves to have been only a truce between one bloody war and another, and fails to give Europe even as long a respite from the clash of armies as was vouchsafed to her by the Congress of Vienna, if the League of Nations fails to solve these burning questions which divide the nations of Europe and either perishes altogether or sinks to a show depot of old fashioned diplomacy, if democracy in Europe fails before Bolshevism or plutocracy, or is mastered by a new militarism, Mr. Lloyd George will be remembered only as a man who fought bravely for a cause for which he was unable to win lasting victory. He will not rank among the immortals, but with the men of genius who have failed. Nor if we turn from his foreign to his domestic, role, is a different verdict possible. No one can deny that his policy of social reform was inspired by the highest motives of Christian charity, or that it has done much to relieve distress, but no one can say that it has so far solved the