Welsh Journals

soil from the savage destruction that had devastated Belgium and northern France. But the Association is feeling its way towards doing far more than this, and will assuredly accomplish its objects if only it has the interest and co-operation of the general public behind it. In conjunction! with the Carnegie Trust and the County Councils, it is providing intellectual opportu- nities of the most attractive kind by means of popular lectures and skilfully arranged Study Circles, side by side with social recreations and outdoor games. It is, moreover, working hand in hand with existing indus- trial associations to re-organise and revive village industries, the dying out of which has robbed the country side of the best of its young enterprise. Great obstacles have been experienced and still obtrude when dealing with pioneer work of this kind, requiring as it does that enlightened good-will which is content to sink all differences standing in the way of the general good. Such are the uncharitable clash between Church and Chapel, Labour and Capital. Political dissensions have somewhat died down in the villages, but there are few of them without cliques and those jealously guarded class distinctions which make village committee work so difficult, from the well meant but emasculating patronage of the local magnate down to such strange examples of caste feeling as the following We have twelve little coteries in our village how can we bring them all together in a Village Club? We have a splendid Village Hall here, built some years ago. Lately we tried to get the people together by arranging some open dances, but the attempt failed, because the wife of the upper-butler would not dance with the under-butler, neither would the wife of the upper-gardener dance with the under- gardener, and as for the domestic servants, they formed a class apart. What are we to do? These are two extracts from the Association's last annual report, and go to prove that the adoption of its principles often presents considerable difficulty, and requires much patient tact amongst the local organisers and the experienced advice of those at headquarters. Yet, great as the difficulties may seem in organising a new club. the difficulties are greater still in remodel- ling an old one. Here and there, no dbubt, such institutes may be found still doing good work. We know of one which successfully controls an armv hut erected so long ago as the close of the Crimean War. But, as the report states. old clubs or institutes of thirty or fortv years' standing are often encrusted with traditions, rules, and regulations." which must be considerably modified before the club can satisfy the needs of the present generation. Yet cases of this land are being so discreetly taken in hand bv the Association's organisers, that good old Village Halls To ODNTRIBUTORS. — All articles should be accompanied by a stamped addressed envelope. Only short poems are invited, and rejected contributions will be returned if stamped envelope is enclosed. are being altered to suit to-day's requirements, aad old trust deeds have been recast, to permit of buildings, halls, and institutes that had become white elephants," functioning as up-to-date Village Clubs. Owing to the activities of the Association, the movement is taking on so well that the number of affiliated societies has since the Council meeting of 1920 advanced from 326 to 373. But it would have advanced much faster in response to the crying need had sufficient funds been forthcoming to take the tide of feeling at its flood. For consider the general situation. There are thousands upon thousands of villages in Great Britain, of which scarcely a fiftieth part are enjoying the new life which a well-conducted Village Club invariably awakens. What is the condition of the vast majority ? Nearly twenty years' experience as a Government Inspector of Schools, constantly visiting hundreds of villages in five separate counties, showed me that too many of them were dying of inanition from want of concerted social life. The present condition of such villages since the war is more serious still, if less inanimate. The returned soldiers and women war workers, accustomed to lives of constant work and excitement, start by suffering intensely from the dull- ness of the old village life, and too often end by kick- ing over the traces altogether for want of intelligent sympathy. Take a village with which I am familiar. The young men have no football, the girls no hockey, ground there is no women's institute in the place, no reading-room, no library, no place of meeting but the public-house and yet two massive monuments have been erected to the memory of those who fell in the Great War. If they could have been consulted, would thev have chosen such a memorial in their honour? This is a typical Welsh village, and I need not say is not to be found in Montgomery, the best organised county in Great Britain in the social directions above indicated. The Village Clubs Association has its headquarters at 14a, Iddesleigh House, Caxtofi Street, Westmin- ster. Its Secretary and Chief Organiser is Mr. J. Nugent Harris, its President the Earl of Shaftesbury, its Chairman of Committee Sir Henry Rew of the Board of Agriculture, its Treasurer Lord Bledisloe. Had I more space permitted me to write about its work I might describe how it is unifying the Clubs into District and County Divisions. providing its mem- bers through a supplv branch with books, furniture. games. apparatus, and club appliances of every kind at wholesale prices arranging for courses of lectures, musical festivals, and art exhibitions, promoting village industries, and giving the most delightful Criristmas entertainments to countless British children.