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Cymro a'r Celt Llundain

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LITERARY AND OTHER NOTES.

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LITERARY AND OTHER NOTES. As a protest against the ways of the world, I spent the last Bank Holiday at home, with a few friends, a few books, and a few pipes. In the course of the day, I glanced at a very interesting book, entitled "Welsh Political and Educational Leaders of the Victorian Era," edited by Dr. Vronwy Morgan, and containing contributions by some twenty or thirty more or less well known writers. On a bank holiday one's critical faculty should be asleep, and it was so with me on this occasion. So I am not reviewing now, I am simply meditating. I was greatly struck in glancing through the book by the absence, in the great majority of the articles, of a clear conception' of the inner meaning of true nationalism. Let it be understood, that it is not a characteristic of this book alone, but that it is a characteristic of the great majority of the publications of the Welsh press of to-day, as well as of the great majority of the utterances of the Welsh platforms of our time. Wales to-day presents one of the saddest spectacles imaginable, the spectacle of a nation fooled by political time- servers, and literary sentimentalists. And this is the saddest feature of all-that every son of Gwalia whom we have hailed as a deliverer and a saviour has been lost to us. Some of them have succumbed to the greater England, while others have succumbed to the smaller and meaner Wales, that is, to the conventional and worldly ideals rampant in Wales to-day. Some have discovered the insignificance of Wales, others have wasted their lives in singing the mild praises of an imaginary country. If nationalism is to be a conquering force in our life again, we must first of all learn the lesson that, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the primary concern of every true Welsh nationalist must be-not so much to wage war against England, but rather to strike at Wales, as we know it. For the Wales of to-day, with its borrowed ideals, its false life, its selfish leaders, its ignorant political enthusiasm, its mean sec- tarian squabbles, and its meaner jealousies, it is not worth striking one single blow. And if there be, here or there, a pure soul who, is still able, from a love for his country that passeth all understanding, that is above and beyond all reason and argument, to struggle and to sacrifice, it is because he has not forgotten the truer and nobler Wales of the past, and because he has sufficient faith to believe in a truer and nobler Wales of the future. Let us, before and above all things purify our own life. But some kind reader may remonstrate, by saying that as a nation we are no worse than others-and, indeed, it may be true. Let us not forget this, however. The fact that we are no better than the imperialist, loveless, uninspired nations of our own time and age is ample proof, in spite of all our talk, that we know nothing of Nationalism, and its sacred meaning and power. Gavan Duffy in one of his great nationalist prose-poems, says that one of the lessons of the Young Ireland movement, was that of the purifying power of national- ism. And it was also true of the Young Italy movement and of the new Hungary movement of '48. God knows that no GREAT patriotic party has been without its defects and its weaknesses—but they have never been the sins of ittean hearts and withered minds. We dare not say so much of Wales to-day. NORICK.

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