Welsh Journals

Two Swallows. By J. Arthur Price, M.A. IHE articles by Mr. A. T. Simon and Mr. J. Emlyn Williams in the last number of The Welsh Outlook have each a melan- choly interest. They both illustrate the reaction that has swept over the conquering nations in the late war, and compare as unpleasantly with the sentiments of pre-war Wales as do the scepticism and cynicism of the close of the seventeenth century with the heroism of its beginning. And, as is generally the case, the scepticism and cynicism of disillusioned youth has not always the support of sound learning. Let me first deal with Mr. Simon. Assuming his diagnosis of the present intellectual position in Wales to be correct, his proposed remedy is, to say the least, startling. "The day is com- ing," he tells us, "in Wales when a thorough liaison with world culture by means of the English language will light the beacon fires of thought and knowledge throughout the Principality." The notion that England can impart a culture to Wales that she does not herself possess seems to me ludicrous. Wales requires, we are told, plays. The English drama under Shakespeare had a magnificent dawn. But what is it to-day ? What inspiration has it to offer to Wales? The opinion of most people acquainted with the Anglicised districts of North Wales is that a generation is growing up interested in no intellect- ual ideas higher than those which the cinema offers. And if Mr. Simon really desires to bring Wales over to Modernism, I may warn him in a friendly way that some English authors may prove danger- ous allies. Suppose he succeeds in flooding Welsh Wales with English books a terrible result may ensue. It is conceivable that young Welshmen and women may study Mr. G. K. Chesterton, orMr. Hilaire Belloc, or FatherRonald Knox, or Miss Sheila Kaye-Smith, or Sir Henry Slesser, or Bishop Gore. And if they should I warn him that they may end in going to con- fession and praying for the departed, or accept- ing papal infallibility, or believing in the Imma- culate Conception. From his own point of view he had better leave matters as they are. I pass to Mr. Emlyn Williams. If his article proves anything it proves that he was unfortunate in his education. The appeal to the past glories of Wales, which elsewhere he describes as a guerilla warfare, never, he says, had any effect upon him. If he is correct, he only proves that the old church grammar schools turned out bet- ter Welsh patriots than the present intermediate schools and colleges. Llewelyn Williams was educated at Llandovery, but the past of Wales was as real to him as the past of Ireland was reil to Thomas Davis, or the past of Hungary to Kossuth. The old Welsh grammar schools lid not profess to teach Welsh history. They, ar least, turned out a generation that could appre- ciate its lessons. Owain Glyndwr means nothing to Mr. Emlyn Williams. I should suppose the'r.- fore that Giraldus Cambrensis means even less Yet the memory of that old fight of the thirteentn century for the freedom of the Welsh Church inspired the great Dean Edwards of Bangor in his successful crusade for the appointment of Welshmen to Welsh bishoprics; it suggested to the clergymen who proposed the Bangor scheme, an eirenicon on the Church question, offered in vain in 1895, but which in later years restored to the disestablished Church its ecclesiastical independence of Canterbury. Or take another phase of the old Welsh national movement, and Llewelyn Williams again as its typical leader. The old fight for Welsh freedom was so real to him and as much a matter of practical politics as if, as befitted a gentleman of Towy-side, he had ridden behind Gwenllian of the golden hair in the march on Kid- welly. Here is an example of the way in which he saw the history of the past living again in the present: "South Wales," he once observed to me, "is far more nationalist than North Wales. The great leaders of nationalism in South Wales, like Griffith ap Rhys, got support in the South but North Wales never did anything for them. But let some great North Welsh leader, Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, or Llewelyn ein Llew Olaf, or Owain Glyndwr, come to South Wales and make an appeal to national patriotism and hundreds would rally round him. It is the same to-day. Tom Ellis or Lloyd George come from North Wales and talk Nationalism and become the heroes of our country, but what does North Wales care for D. A. Thomas or Mabon?" But let Mr. Emlyn Williams turn to Llewelyn Williams' ballads, David Gam or Gwenllian for example, and if he cannot rise to the spirit of the Welsh nationalists of the Cymru Fydd days, I can only sorrowfully say that he must live and die a Philistine. But the most remarkable statement in his article is his denial that Wales has suffered from any grievances in the past, or at any rate in the modern past, owing to her lack of any power of self-government. He offers a picture of the intense oppression of the former subject nation- alities of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and con- trasts it with the equitable rule of England in Wales. It is, as he says, difficult to institute a comparison. But on one point he shows what I must call a ludicrous ignorance of the modern history of Wales. He seems to imagine that British governments in modern times only passed such measures for Wales as met with little oppo- sition from the Welsh representatives. I will give him two examples to the contrary, and I do so with less hesitation because, on general principles, I approve of the Parliamentary Acts