Welsh Journals

Pembrokeshire that he retired to end his days, and it was to the old house at Poyston that he chose to retire. He was intensely proud of the place its association with Picton (it was his birthplace) interested him beyond measure, and he loved to retail the game-keeper's story that the hero of Waterloo still visited the Avenue on stated occasions in ghostly guise and with his sword drawn. He restored and enlarged the house, adding to it a beautifully designed Library he filled it with books, covered it with drawings, and glorified Sir Thomas in every nook and corner. He loved out-door life, delighted in field and garden, and carpeted his wood- land with daffodils and tulips (Pembroke tulips) blue- bells and daffodils. His character was one not easily understood by the multitude, but his friends knew him as a true gentleman. He was greatly generous, but blushed to have it known. He had many pensioners, but they never knew it. His manner was brusque, but his heart was kind the apparent gruffness was merely a cloak for sympathy and generosity. He hated priest- CORRESPONDENCE CYFLE CYMRU. To the Editor. Sir,-If Professor Zimmern will read the preface to Cyfle Cymrn he will discover three things:- (1) That the book is issued under the auspices of the Welsh Council of the Student Christian Movement,-a body com- posed of students from all over Wales, and meeting at the moment, as I write, in Carmarthen. It is, therefore, not a book inflicted on the colleges from Central London." (2) That the collaborators in the book are five. They are the most distinguished living Welsh poet, a notable Welsh theological professor, a W.E.A. lecturer in South Wales, who is a member of a well-known circle of younger Nationalists, a popular Welsh preacher, who is also a member of the Labour Party, and the writer, who is not Welsh, but who has known all the Welsh colleges intimately for the last three years, and who has a love for the Welsh people which is more than a mere outside interest. (He has not found it necessary, however, to lose his sense of humour over it, as Mr. Zimmern seems to have done over his.) (3) That the book is a series of outline studies with ques- tions, incomplete. and fragmentary, and intended to be so. The aim, to quote the preface, is "to provoke discussion rather than to pronounce judgment." This necessarily applies more to the first two chapters, for surely nobody would offer as a serious contribution to the subject a sketch of Nation- ality in Europe in eight or ten small pages. Neither is it so offered. The book is intended to set people thinking hoof-marks have been planted down in every chapter, (see the much more truly critical review in Welsh by D. Miall Edwards in the March Student Movement), and the more the book is pulled to pieces, discussed, and traversed, the better we are pleased. We expected this process to be confined to private groups and discussions. We had hardly hoped to draw so distinguished a scholar as Professor Zimmern into giving us a first class public advertisement. For that, how- ever, we are duly grateful to him. There are two general points in conclusion. In the first place, Mr. Zimmern's method of attack raises the whole ques- tion of what are the proper canons of criticism. Apart from his-sweeping condemnation, as a disgrace," of a composite book which he has clearly not read through nor treated as a whole, I submit to him that his references to Williams Panty- celyn and others are an unfortunate suggestio falsi, and it would have been more in line with good taste had he left craft, but he loved the Church —witness liis additions to the little fane at Rudbuxton, where he was wont to worship and where he was laid to sleep. Like all of us, except the unco guid, he probably had his faults, but as he said of Gerald, with all his faults, perhaps in no small degree because of them," it is impossible for any careful observer of his work not to feel personal affection for the man, and admiration for his character. In his good and noble life, in his hatred of tyranny in every form, in his love of nature, his wit and humour, his earnest striving after reform, his indefatigable industry, his chivalrous courage and his great learning," he re- sembled the Giraldus about whom he wrote so lovingly and so well. May he rest in peace in the bosom of that Land of Dyved which he loved above all else. For us who are still left, may his example prove an encourage- ment and an incentive to greater effort. As for the writer of these lines, he can only add, Hiraeth y sy im am a gwynaf, Hir y coffeir a goffdaf them unsaid. Secondly, I ask him to reflect whether he has not unintentionally done great disservice to the best interests of Welsh nationalism. His method of extravagant and un- critical panegyric of Welsh nationality leads nowhere, and is a method which the more thinking of our fellow-countrymen have come to discard. The Welsh papers, which are naturally much more touchy on the question of Welsh nationality than Mr. Zimmern either can or ought to be, have given very favourable notices of our book. It is difficult, therefore, to understand the narrower point of view coming from Professor Zimmern, since not only is he not a Welshman, but his in- fluence in Wales would seem to be all the other way. His appointment of Aberystwyth was to render a service to Wales on the side of international thought which the nation badly needed. His own address at Llandrindod Wells last year showed a much greater sense of responsibility than this hastily written article, and was much more helpful. Yours, etc., THE EDITOR OF Cyfle Cymru. Carmarthen. April 6th, 1920. AN AMERICAN CRITICISM. To the Editor. Sir,-Referring to paragraph 4-e in the article of Principal Thomas Rees M.A., on Welsh Nonconformity," in your March issue, I should like to ask Mr. Rees through the Welsh Outlook what, in the event of German success and the im- position on Great Britain of a peace made in Berlin, he would have thought of any leaders or assemblies that had failed to support the war ? Grant that the peace coming out of the war is unsatisfactory in many respects, would he have pre- ferred German success and a German peace ? That surely was the alternative to supporting the war. However we may disagree regarding self-determination for small nations, and other questions growing out of the war, and however dissatisfied we may be with the Peace Treaty, is it less true now that the war was fought for human liber- ties ? Has he so soon forgotten the spectre that confronted civilization, a spectre that proved to be an actuality inBelgium and France if not in his own country ? Has he forgotten Edith Cavell ? Yours &c., JOHN DOUGHTON. Buffalo, NY. March 20th, 1920.