Welsh Journals

marked a feature of American civilization to-day. These are only some of the achievements standing to the credit of this remarkable Welsh- man wnom Dr. Nicholas Murray Butier, the dis- tinguished President of Columbia University, Jrew York, described recently before the Univer- sity of Liverpool as "the most consummate and powerful politician that had appeared in the whole history of the United States." And yet it was only the other day-on returning from a visit to the country and to the State over whose future he exercised so profound an influence- that a sometime President of the Board of Educa- tion expressed to me his surprise at learning that Jefferson was a Welshman. But the Signers (as the men who appended their signatures to one of the most historic documents in the world's history are affection- ately called in the land of their adoption) included other men who, or whose ancestors, hailed from the Principality and who were proud of their Welsh origin. Of Francis Lewis, the Signer," for instance -thanks to the early teaching of the strict Welsh aunt living near Carnarvon, by whom he was brought up-his biographer records that he was "a master of the Cymraeg, a knowledge of which he retained through the course of his life." Lewis Morris, another Signer," belonged to a family which could trace its Welsh pedigree back to very ancient times; whilst the same may be said of his colleague William Williams. The grand- father of yet a fourth Signer," William Floyd, we are told, emigrated to America from Wales about the year 1680. The Welsh parentage of a greater than any of these (Jefferson onlv excluded), to wit, Robert Morris (who was not merely a "Signer," but also the financier of the Revolution, and whose skill in that field proved as valuable an instrument in bringing success to the arms of the insurgents as did the guns of the soldiers), has perhaps never been clearly established. But it is surely hardly open to question in view both of his Welsh parentage and of the fact that he was born in Liverpool, until recently commonly known (in Wales at any rate), as "the capital of North Wales? These, then, are some of the men who must be included amongst Welsh contributors to what has been called the larger movements of the world." In view of their record there is little wonder that Mr. Whitelaw Reid should have ventured to appropriate and apply to the greatest among them the lines of Shelley- Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be An echo and a light to eternity. But it is not in the now far-receding past, nor Till the Future dares only in the domain of political thought and action that Welshmen have made a name for them- selves across the ocean. Pennsylvania, alone, could furnish name after name of pioneers from Wales who, as captains of industry or princes in commerce, have raised that state-the centre of U.S.A.'s great coal, steel and iron industry- to the commanding position which it occupies in the American Commonwealth. Over Pittsburgh and Scranton the names of Welshmen are writ large, and the large and influential Cymric com- munities in these two towns, as in others which could be mentioned, are evidence of an influence which is not confined to material things but extends to the spheres of religion, music, and general culture, as the coming of a Welsh choir from that State to compete at this year's National Eisteddfod at Treorchy will presently, but only partially, attest. The story of Elihu Yale and the priceless ser- vice he rendered to the cause of Education in America by the timely gift of that cargo of books, pictures and other effects of his, the sale of which helped so materially, at a critical juncture in its fortunes, the struggling collegiate school at Newhaven, in Connecticut,-soon thereafter to be called by his name and to become the world-famous Yale University,-is a story too well-known to need more than passing mention. It dwarfs, however, in its effect the equally laudable action of that other Welshman Colonel Ephraim Williams in founding at Williamstown (a town in Massachussetts called after him) Williams College, the seminary at which, amongst others, President Garfield was educated. And it leaves to be inferred the Welsh origins of Bryn Mawr, the great (perhaps the greatest) University for Women in the world to-day. In passing, by a swift descent, from the nine- teenth, as well as the eighteenth, century to later times it is gratifying to note that Welshmen are still to be found occupying positions of com- manding influence in the Councils of the other branch of the great English-speaking race. In this connection (where space permits the mention of no more than a couple of names) one recalls with satisfaction that it was Charles Evans Hughes, the one-time candidate for the Presi- dency and, later, Secretary of State in the cabinet of President Harding who presided over, and so guided the deliberations of, the Inter- national Conference on the Limitation of Arma- ments which sat, after the Great War, at Washington and so inaugurated one of the greatest movements in the world's history. Similarly one finds another Welshman, James J. Davis, a native of Tredegar (who is to re-visit yr hen wlad in the course of the present month), filling to-day the responsible position of Secretary of Labour in the Cabinet of Mr.