Cylchgronau Cymru

Chwiliwch trwy dros 450 o deitlau a 1.2 miliwn o dudalennau

VOLUME XV THE NUMBER VI WELSH OUTLOOK Where there is no vision the people perish NOTES OF THE MONTH THE age we live in demands the materially useful. But it is not therefore of necessity a materialistic age. Utility and beauty are not always strangers to one another, and there has been evidence for some time of a grow- ing feeling amongst Welshmen that by taking a little thought the two may be happily wedded in our own countryside. And now, at last, we are to have our own national council to preserve the rural beauties of Wales. Some seem to think we are closing the stable door after the horse has gone. "I do not conceal from myself," wrote Mr. Herbert Vaughan, "that any such movement is utterly useless in these days of all-pervading materialism and indifference >to all beauty that now exists. Not one person in a hundred cares a fig for beauty in any form, whether of scenery, or for natural beauty, or for wild flowers." The most appropriate comment on these remarks ap- pears to be "Tut! Tut!" For ourselves we are quite sure that Mr. Vaughan's percentages are sadly wrong, and we are encouraged in this belief by a beautiful little booklet on North Wales which lies before us. Its nineteen perfect illus- trations are all of scenery. Its thirty-six pages of text by S. P. B. Mais are a paean of praise for natural beauty. It is issued by the London, Mid- land and Scottish Railway Company, a utilitarian, materialistic, dividend-earning business concern which is seeking passengers and does not spend advertising money in appealing to sentiments that are not there. These business men are right, and the love of beauty is fortunately a great deal more common than Mr, Vaughan supposes. JUNE 1928 What is required is to make this love vocal, and to provide it with the means of expressing itself in action. This the new Council will do. Lord Boston, who moved the resolution for the forma- tion of the Council, showed sound "local know- ledge" when he urged that Wales presents prob- lems of its own, and requires a Welsh organi- zation to solve them. Nothing but an independent national body can gain the support necessary. But, for a national body, the support should be certain, provided it acts, as it promises to do, "not as a collection of busybodies, but in the spirit of service." FOR years in Wales we have been demanding greater and fuller powers of self-government and the acknowledgment of our right to control our own affairs,-and very rightly so. Before this demand had assumed such a definite political complexion as it has in recent years, it was very insistent in other ways. Memories are short, and most people have long ago forgotten the brave fight made bv the late Mr. Llewelyn Williams, Sir Vincent Evans, and others, for a separate and independent Public Record Office for Wales. So far that crusade has achieved no results, and in these later days there are appar- ently no crusaders. But worse than all that, the more elementary idea of the importance of the preservation and the compilation of local records seems to have been altogether forgotten. County Societies have recently sprung up all over the land like autumn mushrooms, and when their members feast together they generally bewail the