Welsh Journals

social problem, or even opened a certain path to its solution. On the stage of the world, Mr. Lloyd George has played a great part, but it is not yet possible to say whether he has permanently moulded its destinies. Still he has many years of useful life before him and he may yet, if he uses well his great abilities, leave behind him a fame that shall defy time. He has much yet to accomplish, both in domestic and in foreign politics, but of what he may do in these fields, we will speak another time. One clear duty he has still to perform to this little country at home. The dreams of Cymru Fydd, the dreams of his own youth, remain little but dreams. He has given freedom to Bohemia, he has given freedom to THE articles we publish in this issue on the Eisteddfod are only a few of the large number that could have been collected in connexion with the subject, and most of them would have been adversely critical in their tone. We have attempted to show the dissatisfaction rather than dictate a policy, and have allowed different opinions to pass, as for instance in the case of the Cymanfa Ganu, in order to supply a platform for discussion. The Eisteddfod as an institution is a success in several ways. No one denies its popularity or its age. It is Greek in its conception. It is a national festival extra- ordinarily spontaneous. Zeal for it is never fictitious. It collects the nation together in the best of moods. It dedicates itself solely to art. It is a material success. But material successes are often spiritual failures, and the Eisteddfod is a spiritual failure. A spiritual failure is that which encourages bad habits of mind, which has no goal, and which is not fashioned in the mould of beauty. The Eisteddfod encourages vulgarity of mind. It is ignorant of its high function. It establishes no standards of tone and taste. It is unmindful of its fruits. It is a failure because it does not elevate. Hardly can it be said that it teaches. It merely amuses. It encourages vulgarity of mind because it allows its presidents and its leaders, who are the nation's leaders, from the Prime Minister down, to be self-complacent and self-congratulatory, and smugly to tell us, year in, year out, what a wonderful little people we really are. Wales is eagerly waiting for the honest native who will prove to us that we are not. No spiritual lead is ever given at an Eisteddfod to the people by those in high places. Nothing constructive is ever said. It is all declamatory, and pretty, and useless. The issue is that we go home and become more smug than ever upon the mart. If only the youth of the Eisteddfod were to threaten every soft-soaper they heard during the week with the horse-pond, they would in the course of a short cycle of sessions clear the institution of one of its most vulgar and malignant influences. Public and national leaders should be compelled to prove their leadership when brought face to face with the nation, and they should be warned that a presidency or an invitation to speak is not Poland,-though some of Poland's friends insist that he might have done more than he has done,-but his own country remains one of the few historical nations of Europe, that is still refused national self-government. To the cause of Wales as a nation he is pledged by early con- viction and by many a pledge. Will he make himself the champion of the cause ? Will he give to Wales the national Parliament, supreme in all things relating to Welsh government, elected by the manhood and woman- hood of Wales, and to them alone responsible, which Tom Ellis demanded? If he will do this thing, never mind what be the later story of that Parliament, he will live for ever in history as the man who placed his native land once again among the sovereign nations of the earth. THE FAILURE OF THE EISTEDDFOD. merely an honour but a test. The essence of democracy is the autocracy of the people. And the people should be stern with its leaders and expect them to be worthy of the State on every high and low occasion. Thus only should they deserve well of it. Further, the Eisteddfod is a spiritual failure because it sets itself no ideal. It dedicates itself solely to art, but it flounders badly in its conception of art and in its idea of culture. Merely to give prizes for poems is not culture. A concert is not culture. Complacent oratory is not culture. Culture is an austere influence; something flowing from a chaste well, and chastening its receivers. Culture is seriously premeditated. It is sincerity and high purpose in thought and expression. It is also a benevolence, a directing influence always towards the goo d and the beautiful. And we do not find this benevolence in the Eisteddfod, the stern but delicate desire to guide and to uplift. Youth is not taught, nor old age corrected. And the reason is that the Eisteddfod has no faith, not even a creed. It has no knowledge. It does not know the ingredients of the art to which it solely dedicates itself. It does not know where its poetry and its prose and its dramas and its music stand. It rewards its poetry, but never reads it. It has no conception of the function of drama as an art. It is oblivious of the musical possibilities of the country. And as for Welsh prose, it is unaware of its existence. This is not the place to discuss the merits and characteristics of Welsh prose, but we are allowed to draw attention to the ignorant superficiality of a cultural institution that has not even the knowledge that it is ignoring it. The Eisteddfod is a great literary festival. They call it the people's university. The vital literary event of the last twenty years has been the discovery that the idiom of the unsophisticated farmer and quarryman can be moulded into a delightful writing prose that is unexcelled for vigour, directness, and variety. The Eis- teddfod has not yet realized that the Welsh prose of thirty years ago was execrable, and a disgrace to an enlightened nation. The Eisteddfod has never realized that the prose of Y Bardd Cwsg is the only achievement of supreme merit in the annals of Welsh literature. And the Eistedd-