Welsh Journals

worked smoothly and satisfactorily. This settle- ment was reached in the days of the old Newport School Board, that is, prior to the passing of the Education Act of 1902, and it has remained in force ever since. The Church authorities in New- port then surrendered their schools to the School Board (now the L.E.A.) on the understanding that there should be adopted in all the Board Schools as well as in all the Church Schools of the borough an agreed syllabus of religious instruc- tion. To ensure that the syllabus was being adhered to and that the religious teaching was being satisfactorily given, arrangements were made to have the schools inspected and examined annually by the clergy and ministers of the town. Every clergyman and minister in the town is on a panel of inspectors for this purpose. Each school is visited annually by groups of members of the panel, as may be arranged by the committee of clergy and ministers. The "inspectors" report on their school visits to the L.E.A. and their reports are communicated to the schools and entered in the log book. The enviable result of this great achievement in Newport is that there has been absolute peace for over 30 years, that no "reli- gious problem" exists in the schools of the borough, and that no denominational obstacles arise in connection with the adoption of the Authority's scheme of school re-organization. This, of course, applies only in so far as the Church schools are concerned. The position with regard to a small number of Roman Catholic schools in the town is another story. Cannot our religious and educational leaders agree to say to each educational area in Wales "Go thou and do likewise ? ANNOUNCEMENTS have recently been made concerning the transfer to the Welsh Board of Health of certain additional functions and responsibilities. While we heartily applaud the spirit underlying this decision of the Minister of Health, we think it necessary to point out that the transferring of these functions is only the normal and natural outcome of the passing of the Local Government Act, 1929. All that the Minister is entitled to is the credit of not having vetoed this almost inevitable instalment of added devolution to the Welsh Board of Health. Even such a negative virtue as that is a welcome change in spirit from that which has influenced the treat- ment received by the Welsh Board at the hands of some of Mr. Greenwood's predecessors but there is nothing in the new arrangements which need give Welsh devolutionists any cause for elation. All that need be said about those arrangements is that they do not represent an active and actual denial of that measure of decentralization which new legislation has thus rendered possible, and which is consistent with previous decisions. The real position is that if these new functions had not been transferred, the Welsh Board would have received an undeserved and unwarrantable rebuff. We are grateful even for this much. On the other hand, our readers should not allow themselves to be misled by statements which have appeared in the Welsh press and are erroneously based on the assumption that there has been a definite and genuine extension of the delegation to the Welsh Board of Health of those administrative functions which were originally reserved for Whitehall when the Welsh Board was first constituted. Let us be thankful for small mercies and continue to press for larger ones. DO you own a house or a cottage in Wales ? Are you going to build one? Does your circle of acquaintances include a landlord, or an estate agent, or a member of any local authority which boasts a housing scheme, or a builder, or an architect, or anybody concerned in the erection or management of house property in the Principality? If you can answer any part of this catechism in the affirmative, as surely most of us can, you are in a position to co-operate in a most attractive and at the same time practical and inexpensive scheme for beautifying the countryside. Read, and get your friends to read, the fifth and latest pamphlet issued by the Council for the Preservation of Rural Wales at the modest price of threepence. It is by Mr. T. Alwyn Lloyd, with a translation into Welsh by Mr. Iorwerth C. Peate, and is called "Brighter Welsh Villages and how we can obtain them." Mr. Lloyd accuses us, rightly, of failure even to ap- proximate to harmony with the natural beauty surrounding us. Our failures have been most grave in the last fifty years or so, and to-day many of our small towns and villages must plead guilty to his charge of being dull, disordered and drab. He not merely accuses us. He tells us how and why we have gone wrong. We have neglected colour, disregarded the very elements of decent design, and revelled in grotesquely wrong pro- portions and combinations of details and materials. He gives examples, and some of them, notably those of the combination of dis- cordant materials and colouring with our Welsh slates, have an industrial as well as an aesthetic significance. We ourselves believe that the recent slackening in the demand for Welsh slates is not entirely due to economic factors. It is admitted that they are the best of all roofing materials, but the impression is undoubtedly abroad that they are far from being the most beautiful. Mr. Lloyd points out that there is nothing aeesthetically wrong with roofs of Welsh slates in themselves, and happy results can be obtained by the use of proper materials and colour in conjunction with them. We have seen