Welsh Journals

pleased to preserve this letter and if you com- municate it to Mr. Barrett, obtain the favour of him to return it back when perused. I should also beg the favour of your Lordship to show it to my Lord Camden, if you please, and together with mv most respectful compli- ments to his Lordship, have the goodness to present my excuses for not being able to pay my respects at Christchurch before I left Town. The Duke of Northumberland's removal into the North was earlier than I was aware of, and did not allow me time to have the honour of waiting on his Lordship.. But when I return to London in the winter I shall at all times be happy to attend him at Lincoln's Inn Fields." MODERN THOUGHT, AND THE MAN-IN-THE-STREET by M. Watcyn Williams THE Man in the Street, when he emerges from the flickerings of the cinema mind and dares to think, must be a very puzzled and worried being; like Kipps he feels "What a rum go everything is." From his childhood he has been taught more or less to believe in the Gospel. His parents believed it, though often enough it seemed to make every little difference to them. He went to Sunday School, and possibly to church, and all the while there was presented to his mind a kaleidoscope of Jesus Christ. He sang "Gentle Jesus, meek and mild," and if he was fortunate "Strong Son of God, immortal love," and yet in the charge of this strange wondrous One of whom he heard were the keys, not only of heaven, but of hell. For a time "the burning fire" loomed large in his dreams, finally to be suppressed both by inclination and by the views of the world with which the day school and the press made him vaguely familiar. His mind was a hotch-potch of incompatibles, and then came the war. A call to action has its merits, though they can be exaggerated, and the man in the street "joined up." There were things in life worth fighting for, glory be, despite the fact that a little con- sideration of the best weapons might have pro- duced different results. "The chariots of Israel and the horsemen thereof," and the sword of the Spirit were soon identified with the horse guards, and in due course with poison-gas and Mills bombs. Now and then Tommy (for Tommy was simply the man-in-the street in khaki) had his doubts. Bishops and moderators told him that he was fighting the good fight, and that the war would end war, and in his heart he knew that the The manuscripts that Percy examined came to an untimely end. Chambers forgot his trust. So completely did he forget, that when he returned to London he never made the slightest attempt to return the manuscript to Lord Dacre. Furthermore, when crossing the Indian Ocean on his return to India, he ordered his servant, one day, to tidy up his belongings, and he, thinking Chatterton's manuscripts to be rubbish, threw them overboard. This, Cham- bers informed Percy of in a letter of apology fifteen years ½|ater Surely the latest apology on record. Few know that some of Chatterton's manuscripts were lost in the Indian Ocean. values for which he fought, freedom and home and a warless world, were among the values of Jesus Christ. Yet that doubt gnawed like a mag- got in his brain. Jesus defended the weak, in His own way, and He cursed those who robbed widows' houses, but bombing German towns in retaliation for Zeppelin raids didn't fit in some- how. It was good business and ought to be done, but how reconcile it with One who was fool- ish enough to command the love of enemies ? Tommy sank farther into the mud not only of the Somme, but of his own soul. Church parade, anyhow, was a farce, though some padres were bricks, and Tommy drugged that little maggot with the aspirins of action. Civilians contrived to help him with more dope. The rum ration in the trenches was small beer to the strong brew of "homes for heroes" and a land fit for them to dwell in. There were visions of no longer sow- ing and another reaping, and of a fig-tree, his own, under which he might sit undisturbed. There followed the Armistice and demobilis- ation and unemployment, and double-chinned managers who snarled "Oh, the war, that's over." Tommy cursed or sobbed, according to his temperament, when back into his ken came the dear strange One of his childhood. The pictures of Him were all muddled up by now, but they retained one significance, that of the straw to which the drowning man clutches. The church might yet prove a lifeboat, and Tommy hung on. In some cases, for Tommy is legion, there were wonderful rescues, but on the whole the boat has not been launched. Some wanted old-fashioned sails and oars, others a motor engine. These would carry the latest remedies, while those re-