Cylchgronau Cymru

Chwiliwch trwy dros 450 o deitlau a 1.2 miliwn o dudalennau

the limitation of armaments went side by side with an ardent sympathy for struggling nationalities overseas: this is illuminated by a fascinating letter to Kossuth in 1853 that Mr. Masterman has discovered in the Széchényi Library in Budapest and appended to the present edition. This book also contains many instances of Cobden's political realism-his frank acknowledgement (p. 105) that his views on foreign policy might well divide former adherents to the Anti-Corn Law League, and some shrewd observations (p. 231) on the tactics to be pursued by the radical press. There are also superb judgements on contemporaries-on Glad- stone ('I fear he sometimes entangles his conscience in his intellect'), on Palmerston and Bright. Those who still follow Bright's later account and see his partnership with Cobden simply as 'twenty years of most intimate and most brotherly friendship' may find some surprises in this book. For Welsh historians, the great interest here lies in the large number of letters printed from Cobden to the Welsh radical, Henry Richard. Last year, honour was rightly done to Richard's triumphant return for Merthyr Tydfil in the 1868 election, and his subsequent twenty years in the House as champion of Welsh and other causes. This volume recalls the earlier Richard, the cosmopolitan radical, the tireless secretary of the Peace Society and leader-writer on the Morning and the Evening Star. Cobden throughout was Richard's mentor, whether in exposing the empty character of such terms as the 'equilibrium' of Europe, or in warning him to restrain his journal's call for parliamentary reform. But the relationship was far from being a one-sided one. There is still much to be written on Richard's career as an advocate of international con- ciliation; important light may be shed here in Goronwy Jones's forth- coming volume from the University of Wales Press, Wales and the Quest for Peace, 1815-1939. In the interim, not the least of Mr. Masterman's services is to remind us that Wales, no less than England in the mid- nineteenth century, had its apostle of peace. KENNETH O. MORGAN The Queen's College, Oxford SOLDIER-SURGEON: THE CRIMEAN WAR LETTERS OF DR. DOUGLAS A. REID, 1855-56. Edited by J. O. Baylen and A. Conway. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville, 1968. Pp. vii, 158.$5.25. In 1924 Dr. Douglas Reid was buried in Tenby, where for many years he had been a magistrate and town councillor as well as Medical Officer of Health. The great adventure of his life had been seventy years earlier when, as a newly qualified surgeon, he served with the British army during the Crimean War. While in the Crimea, he wrote frequent letters to his