THE HONGKONG

TUESDAY, TELEGRAPH.

MARCH

1938.

If Saint David

HAVE been asked to state what, in my opinion, St. David would think of the Wales of 1937 if he were allowed to revisit the fold of his missionary labours.

Neither I nor anyone elso can even make a guess at the answer unless we are first of all told which of the two Bt. Davids is meant. Whothor

the rough and simple Briton, who lacked almost every quality valued by the successful Welshman of to- day (and whose virtues would be regarded by our extremely well- behaved generation as rather em- barrassing if not positively unbecoming), or that other St. David, who has been evolved from our modern consciousness by annual relays of First of March patriots.

Wales is indeed unfortunate in not possessing a secular figure as its national hero, such as Scotland has in Bobble Burns or England in

perhaps Shakespeare or, ought to say, Mr. Baldwin.

one

It has not had a good offect on our national character to try, on St. David's Day, to at our modern he unyielding aecularity Into frame of primitive Christianity.

How much better would it have been if we could openly extol a rather naughty boy like Robert Burns as our ideal, and have, once a year at least, a real Saturnalian orgy of national honesty!

But then

one remembers England, and finds that this line of speculation is rather unproft- able....

T

HERE is, I suppose. some- thing to be said for having a saint like St. David rather than a sinner like Burns as a national ideal, and one can at least bo thankful that among the many monstrosities which English

domination imposed upon Wales in the nineteenth century it did not quite succeed in substituting a politician for a religious reformer as the person to be toasted on the. first of

March.

It very nearly succeeded; we were only saved from that ult mate calamity by the fortunate fact that Mr. Lloyd George was vigorous enough to survive the wear and tear of the Great War.

If he had died in 1918; we might have borrowed oven our national caint from English politics.

But supposing for a moment, that our St. David is really that

CAME

BACK

-by-

W. J. Gruffydd

PROFESSOR OF CELTIC, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF SOUTH WALES AND MONMOUTHSHIRE, CARDIFF,

early ascetic who thought that he had converted Wales to Christian- ity, what would such a one think and feel if he could visit the Wales of to-day?

He would, I believe, be pro- foundly shocked, and would prob- ably use his glit of thaumaturgy to blast away from his land and from his people a good many of their nental leading

and. physical characteristics.

What would he have done about the bombing school in Lleyn, for the burning of which three of his modern followers are in an Eng- llah prison?

In all seriousness, I am compelled to say that he, too, would have done what the vast majority of comfortable Welshmen like myself would not have the courage or the conviction to do. In his misplaced zeal he would have burned it to the ground, and would have cursed the people who had allowed it to be erected in their midst.

AM thoroughly familiar with Rhygyvaich's spirited "Life". of St. David, and I challenge any one of the Imperial patriots who, on innumerable feasts in honour of this ascetic, will wax.

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eloquent in con- demnation of the three patriota

in Worm now wood Scruba, ta'

deny the correctness of my conclu- slons.

If, further, St. David had learned that the allen-tongued dwellers beyond the Severn had haled these three from their own courts In Wales into London in order to secure a trial by an allon jury, and had refused to allow them to speak their own language, he would have thought that the history of Sam- son driven in bonds to Gaza to toil at the mill with slaves would be too weak an analogy.

The possibility of such hap- penings would be beyond his simple understanding, and he would therefore refuse to believe that life in Wales had become so complex that it was possible for a body of Welshmen like the Council of Swansea University College, to de- prive one of Wales' ablest and most devoted sons of his livelihood and the country of his services, Just because his duty had called on him to suffer imprisonment for its Bake.

It is quite certain that he would have found the whole tangle la- comprehensible, and would prob- ably set out on a new mission to try to rekindle one little spark of self-respect in his own flesh and

blood.

I imagine that what would most painfully surprise him would be the attitude of that section of the Church which claims to be in the 'direct succession of the Chris- tianity which he had first intro- duced into Wales, and which is to-day the legal guardian of the Menevlan-shrine where, his bones are fald.

W

ITH what incredulity would he learn that the Church in Wales, far from leading and encouraging tho Wolah people, fighting with their backs to the wall to preserve their own cul- ture and their own language

the

only language that St. David himself, know--were (with the exception of

great- hearted bishop and a mere handful of country parsons) determined to hasten the day when the Saxon yoke should be fixed in complete finality on our native land, and the last vestige of our immemorial cul- ture should have vanished!

one

He would be told that the Welsh

IMPRESSION BY GLAN WILLIAMS OF HOW ST. DAVID

-WOULD VIEW THE WALES OF TO-DAY.

clerics who are careful that their children should not know the the Welsh of contamination tongue, that these very renegadea hold services in Welsh on the first of March in churches where not a word of Welsh is allowed to bo heard on the other three hundred and sixty-four days; and would he weep or laugh?

H

E. would weep, I think, bo- cause he would feel that God "had sent a plague of universal madness to punish his people. It would not occur to him to laugh at them as hypocrites, because he would be utterly incapable of thinking that basic quality like national integrity could be a sub- ject for hypocrisy.

કર

This is no mere fancy, and I will put the question to the leaders of the Welsh Church in its simplest and barest form.

If St. David to in reality, as he is symbolically, the guardian saint of Welshmen, do they seriously think that he would for one moment acknowledge-them as his succes- sors, and not rather as open and avowed enemies of all that he loved and valued?

The more one thinks of the pre- sent condition of Wales, the more Burprising it becomes that we should pretend to honour the memory of this saintly monk, while comfortably acqulescing in many of the horrors of that heathen Inhumanity which it was his mission to destroy.

Tals simple Christian would to- day bow his head in shame at the

in sight of the distressed areas Walcs, and would most certainly start

a campaign of prayer and fasting against the cynical and stony-hearted Government which allows such things to be. A Government which even excuses its unconcern'by the plea that its Arat duty is to equip the nation

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slaying Christian men more efficient than those Christian men themselves possess!

While still in the grasp of his would hear, bowilderment he hymned in fervid unison, a great national pean to a new deity, the god of National Fitness; a psalm of praise to Physical Health rising from the ranks of obese plutocrats to drown the cries of the under- fod, the under-clothed, the tuber- cle-riddled masses of the Welsh Black Arcas,

Ho would look for proteats from the. accredited leaders of Wales, and would find only self-satisfac- tion and smugness.

He would be driven to conclude that his great work of fifteen cen- turies ago had been in vain and that God was at last chastising the Welsh nation for its hard-licarted- ness and ita obstinate hypocrisy.

Sab

T. DAVID was an austere and bitter man; if he revisited his native land in 1937, his bitter- ness would certainly land him in an English prison, and the cathe- dral church of St. David's would re-echo with donunciationg of him. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the toast of "St. David "to his immortal memory!

-To-day's Thought ANGER wishes all mankind had only one neck; love that it had only one heart.

--RICHTER.

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From EUROPE and STRAITS.

The Steamship

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examination

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OUR BRITISH CROSSWORDS

ACROSS

1 A gant I'd saved became any-

thing but a help (12)

8 What started this sad noise is

extinct (7)

O Forceful (7)

11 Salter's undesigning change (7) 12 Flower (7)

13 Apparently unstable mountains

theso (5)

14 An addition containing import-

ed dairy produce (0)

10 What is wanted is someone to get rid of what is not wanted

(9)

10 It's a bit thin (5)

21 This language has other things.

it in Latin (7)

int

23 This African town is nearly all

atmosphere and magle (7)

24 Olympan (7)

25 Thus usually manages to create

Interest (7)

28 Indifferent, but half remained

(12)

DOWN

1 Upwards its in pasteboard, but

Is by no means inlld (7)

2 Ond may feel this in the French

interior (7)

3 Important postprandial opera-

tion (D)

One cannot say there is no' RE counting for this (5)

Part of it is on a horse, but it

is a matter of woight (7)

6 Correct pigment to depict the aportsman's quarry around the marah? (7)

7 Bringing diiculty (12)

10 Everyone liken sitting on this

English town (13).

15 This history is mostly of long

standing (0)

17 A pantomimo character (7)

18 "Odo in it" (anag.) (7)!

19 If this dog was naughty would

its owner do 117. (7)

20 Snubbed, inside out (?)

22 A relativo (5)

YESTERDAY'S SOLUTION

8 ECURITY CLUTOH KMOBIRBRABORAR

ILLINOIS NAUSEA

L BURBEMÖSTEM LUMBERMAN HOARD

YANAUMEROASANE

DEANE

LEA BZLO

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