Welsh Journals

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The There is at the moment a great deal of Colleges. original research work in science, in literature, in history and in the arts being carried on at the Welsh Colleges or in connection with them, but the great mass of the people know nothing of it. It is one of the great faults of our educational system that there is no continuous communication between the Colleges and the people. It has, for instance, been recently an- nounced that the agricultural department at Bangor intends to specialize in research work on animal breeding, and Aberystwyth in plant-breeding. We think it is of the utmost importance that the general community should know something of all work of this nature, whether in pure or applied science, or the arts, and we propose, if possible, to secure contributions regularly from the men actually engaged in the work. As a first instalment we publish this month a short resume of scientific work carried on mainly at Aberystwyth, and we hope to follow it up with similar articles dealing with all original work in progress. Students' We believe that, judged from the material Activities. standpoint of the numbers of students in attendance, the three Welsh Colleges, and Aberystwyth in particular, show signs of unparallelled prosperity, but to an outsider, there are very disquieting signs about their present condition. Has there taken place, in recent years, some fundamental change in the character and the outlook of the average student, and is it for better or for worse ? The question is forced upon us by a recent issue of the Dragon, the College magazine, which has been sent to us. The College Magazine has a great history. It was started in the generation of Tom Ellis, Sir Ellis Griffith, Prof. J. E. Lloyd, Principal T. F. Roberts, Sir Owen Edwards, Rev. David Adams and their contemporaries. In those days it was a great journal, marked by a seriousness of purpose and a loftiness of character, and for generations (in the student sense) afterwards it strove to maintain its original ideal. We do not wish to say too much about it, but the futility and the vulgarity (in parts) of the last issue must have distressed the minds and souls of every one who has the interest of Aberystwyth at heart. Is there no one in the College now who can give the Dragon a A GOOD deal has happened to interest the inhabitants of the Celtic Fringe since our last number ap- peared-the Irish Strike, the farce of the Scottish Home Rule Bill, and the creation of a Welsh Archbishopric. The most important of these events, politically speaking, has been the Irish strike. Never was a strike more success- ful and never was there one more defensible. The Castle Government in Ireland is in a bad way. It is reaping the reward of its innumerable past iniquities. The condition of the country is horrible, as the condition of every country is horrible when its government defies public opinion. The natural leaders of the land are in prison, literary societies are broken up or suppressed, the serious page ? Is there no public opinion among the students which in effect amounts to a censorship in taste and tone ? The time is not so very long ago when some of the things appearing in the Dragon would not have been tolerated even in the manuscript sheets that adorned the Common Room walls. For the honour of the College and the credit of the students, and indeed for the sake of the future of Wales, there should be an immediate tightening of the editorial or some other reins. The Drama. Our very innocent note in our last issue on the subject of the futility of the controversy raised by the Editor of the Darian has apparently driven him into uncontrollable fury, but is it possible for any one who has watched the development of this move- men in Wales to deny that one of the main characteristics of a great mass of our dramatic productions at this moment is a complete avoidance of artistic discipline. The dramatist must serve an honest apprenticeship like every other crafts- man-and there are not more than half-a-dozen writers in Wales who have remembered that fact. Let the Churches and the local societies do as much as they possibly can- and they can do a great deal-but a great Welsh drama will never be produced without deep study and observation of methods. And we must welcome every artistic contribution even though it be not saturated with kailyard sugar. To say that Ephraim Harris and Change belong to the same school of literature as My People or Capel Seion is surely ludicrous. But it is the old controversy that raged round Ibsen in Norway and around Synge's Play boy of the Western World in Ireland, and we pre- dict that the issue will be same. In the meantime, Prof. W. J. Gruffydd and Mr. Henry Lewis will confer a real benefit on their country by publishing, as they intend to do, good translations of foreign dramatic masterpieces in Welsh. A dozen plays by Ibsen, Bjornson, Gogol, Hauptmann, Maeterlinck and similar writers would form a fine craft library for the young dramatist, but we ought also to have something like a national theatre where, in addition to our own national plays, the great dramatic masterpieces of European renown would be regularly staged. Let us give up quarrelling and start creating. THE OUTLOOK ISSUES OF THE CELTIC FRINGE. spy and the agent-provocateur rule and the hideous tyranny is called Law and Order." Every political lesson that the history of England has taught is scouted in John Bull's other island." Even the rights which Magna Charta was supposed to have conferred on England are denied to Ireland. That in such a country crime should break out is natural. The murders of policemen are deplorable and disgraceful. Yet if policemen were used in Wales to break up Eistedd- fodau, and policemen are used in Ireland to break up meetings of the Gaelic league, they would probably not be murdered, but they would certainly have an unhappy time. Politicians who employ the police to suppress