Welsh Journals

Church bowed before the civil law. Not only did it acquiesce in what it had denounced as robbery and sacri- lege, it made an exceedingly good bargain with the des- poiler. I am not blaming it for its conduct, which may be justified on various grounds, but especially by the fact when the Church's first duty was to the Welsh people. But when this is granted,h te ugly fact remains that the Church, if the claims which it put forward to the retention of the Tithe Rent charge were sincere, has recognised the right of the State to confiscate private property as well as to upset an ecclesiastical system. In so doing it has cnoceded the extreme Socialist claim that the State may justly confiscate without compensation. If we look at the old Liberal Nonconformist party in Wales, we see a like subservience to the State. There are still groups of earnest people seeking in vain to moisten their parched lips with the dead sea fruit of the last general election, trusting souls, who believe that the Heaven which penitence and prayer in vain sought in the days of yore will be realised in their own age by the salaried efforts of Whitehall bureaucrats. And there is still the lawyer hold- ing up the English Law as the source of Welsh civilization. Even so good a nationalist and a politician, so free from the worst side of the political lawyer as Mi. Llewelyn A LAMENT OF THE CAMBRIAN RAILWAY I. TO one of last year's numbers of the Welsh Outloo'? I contributed an article called A Meditation on the Cambrian Railway." It was written after a happy holiday at Aberystwyth-the spiritual home of many who have drifted to strange shores on tides of circumstance. For me, it was a visit of great importance. Upon the way, I found the secret of the Cambrian Rail- way The veil fell from it, and I saw that The Cam- brian," so far from being a subject for apology, was an unappreciated theme for bards and troubadours. In one of those swift flashes that make the insight of the Celt, I discovered that, as a people, we had misunderstood the Cambrian. The fault was not in the Railway, but in ourselves. We were too short of vision to see the gold and purple of its splendour. We did not realise that all those Cambrian engine-drivers were of the Mabinogion. In the men who punched our tickets we failed to recognise the kin of Dafydd ap Gwilym. We had listened to the suggestions of those who spoke darkly of a Double Line. In bondage to our times, we were blind to old symbols shining in new forms. I understood at last the cause of our misjudging. Seduced by Double Liners, we had, all along, been contrasting our National Railway with the London North and the Great Western. Not without contumely. How futile that comparison What falling from the sublime To understand the Cambrian, we should, of course, have been comparing it to the desert ways to Mecca, to the path to Rome, to the high roads to Canterbury and Caerleon. Everything should be judged by its appointed purpose. Williams, K.C., has, in his really great book The Making of Modern Wales, fallen into this error. He writes with enthusiasm of the way in which Wales, in the days of Henry VIII., bowed down before the great idol of English Tudor law, for resistance to which Sir Thomas More had died, forgetting for the moment that with that sur- render, Welsh patriotism and poetry died for generations. Such are the views of the classes. And is it wonderful that the industrial democracy should apply the lessons which these governing classes have taught it, should accept the theory of the Caesarian State and seek to use the powers of a Caesarian State for its material welfare ? Yet, on the other side, there is a great hope. Welsh Home Rule must come, and Welsh Home Rule will free Wales from the evil traditions of English legalism and English bureaucracy. The new Welsh State will arise in a country where there are great institutions like the Free Churches and the Eisteddfod, which the State has not made. It will be moulded by men who, in their hearts, know that the individual conscience, and voluntary associ- ations have their rights. It will start free from the evil traditions of the English legal system. The task for men like Principal Rees is to show to the world in Wales the ideal of a Christian State. By J. 0. Francis. The Cambrian Railway existed to take people to Aberyst- wyth-one of the loftiest ends that any agency could serve. Pondering on the character of Aberystwyth, I realised that the methods of the Railway weie beautifully appro- priate and conceived in a spirit of profoundest under- standing. Aberystwyth was a little Pilgrim City lying in contemplation by the sea. The Cambrian authorities had, therefore, fashioned their line as a Pilgrim Way. I remembered that something in the soul of Aberystwyth had always stilled the -fever and the fret of our hasty modern life. The switchback had crumbled on Constitution Hill. The hydraulic railway on the slope had sunk to a jest that mocked its promoters. The camera obscura had long ceased to attract the casual eye of curiosity. Even the Pier had never been an outstanding success. Time had threatened, but had not conquered that dreaming quietude. As it had ever been, Aberystwyth was still a place to be approached in the mood of the Wandering Friar-and at no greater pace than his. To draw near in the vulgar violence of speed would be to break the spell. The Cam- brian Railway maintained the ancient glamour, and three parts of our delight in getting to Aberystwyth came-as it should-out of the fear that we might never arrive at all. Without exaggeration, I may safely say that the all- enveloping poetry of the Cambrian Railway was not appre- ciated until I announced it in these columns. I do not claim any credit for myself on that account. I had blun- dered upon its beauty, and I was humbly glad to be its advocate. From every corner of the country, there was a great surge of response to the new significance in which the Cambrian was enwrapped. I was told, on the best