The Rhondda Leader

The Anglicisep. (By A. W. WADE-EVANS, Offeiriad). tl We ar'0 to distinguish carefully between jje Angliciser and the Angloi-Welshman. }atter may be largely Anglicised in ion' an<^ thoughts and habits, "but he mains a Welshman, and is in no way «>n«ciously opposed to the Nation. The on lc'lser> on the other hand, may be to igllt5y Anglicised, but he has ceased hi r a Welshman as far as ho can, and s feelings are consciously directed p°a*nst the Nation. Also, I beg my wit^8 nc>t ^oi confound either of these wti +L.tlle Immig,,atit from over the border, a lit English or of any other nation- Y- The immigrant who settles in Wlu *S t-°° imPressed by the fact of oft uationality to deny it, and more ,(.'n than not hi.s curiosity passes into th< IVA symPa^y with Welsh feeling. But a e Anglo-Welshman and the Angliciser i e "°th of Welsh origin, the distinguish- "19 mark of the latter being that he is .gainst his own nation. By an Angliciser anrlean^ Pufely and simply a Welshborn ai Rationalist. I must guard myself 0 by insisting that nationalist" only eans one thing. There are some who di + nati0in^ists because they are Metho- sts, or because they are Radicals, which not nationalism at all. Nationalism ranscends every sect, party, or school of thought its central object is the Nation, T>I ° NATION ONLY- fo Angliciser appears under many g(!ms'.a'ul in every class of Welsh society, h ^times he is seen as a young man (who 8 been to South Africa) speaking after Sl*perior manner about the parochial- sin1 °* affairs. Or it may be a .f^ple servant girl who has just returned an ?1 months' service in Cwmbwrla, f,v 'ms forgotten" her mother's p n§Ue- Or, perhaps, the lady in the Nonage whose one anxiety is lest her ogeny should develop too copious an ccent. Or he turns up under the form « an eminently respectable grocer who, wifl A Practical man," is out of patience u all Welsh sentimentality." I have tfjen Hiet him as a brilliant Oxford his- \ieal man who with the most exquisite alvete maintained that Welsh History of'8+ 110,11 est," or at least only a matter th^ A28' From Holyhead to Chepstow, ti •' Angliciser is a familiar figure. If j.s v^ere all, there would be no occasion fthe present writing. He is, how- e%r, a national problem. Mtlh maily ways are possible of dealing th problems, but only one wise sure f0,?V. and this one wise sure way is only Hjj him who remembers that every pro- C01^ains some real appreciable rea- its existence." There is that in cm .or ^rue or rea^ without which it inv l 1U;ler have come nor continue. It °!v,es KOlIlle lifegiving element (so to iiina W^ich gives it force and per- iftf n/p1(-'e • T° find this element is the one method of meeting problems. Is Way is not easy, but very hard. It sroin us infinite humility and st .nite charity. The wise of all ages have iven to follow this path, for it is that a ,ary narrow way which tests the char- vii T tt16 uttermost. Every strong str nation has been built up by Suu £ gling after it. Every weakling has ccumbed by avoiding it, following the Ways? tlie false straight cuts which Ôe bound to lead to futility and to death. these easy and futile methods, one is v complain that our pi'oblem exists. Life, ^ever, means solving problems, and we beset with them whether we will or not from the cradle to the gra\ e. e true that in a sense they are oui ^mies, for we have to battle with then] a's best we may, but they are also on Opportunities of living strenuously. A strenuous life means solving problems jffcll, and it is not otherwise with the hfe of nations. National strenuousness character depends on the wisdom or folly with which nations meet their itficulties. Another easy and futile slethod is to get angry. Consider even CQ siniple an instance of a problem as a eo0arlour riddle (e.g., When is a 1 a 0r not a door ?) It is easy to get into a.nd call the author a fool and kick Maiden aunt who in all innocence ouPounds it, but such raving only betrays °Wn inability to solve the difficulty. a Welshman the other day called i l Breconshire squires, who thei. to appoint bilingual policemen in <WCOUnty> a ,se^ snobs, he was pro- upon the housetops his own PfoKi e'P^ssness in the presence of the !tior eUl of the Angliciser. But alas! WW, • .n this, he was repelling those tlle ,'t is our interest to win, widening streii lu ^e.^ween them and ourselves, and Anj»i- .bening the hands of those very t^r0tti1Sers who have been trying to 11 t 0ur na^i°,nal existence so long, fervid well, you Welshmen of the per- ilIg 1 SOl't" all futile methods of deal- A. Hi Pr°blems are also suicidal." ai. nS becomes to us a problem when e. Unable to see that in it which Hti atlS at one with other things. It is •ioW 0lTlaly in the world, a thing out of ^,J*h the rest of life. No one, for thg is in any way perplexed with atement that a door is a door. But the Sliggestioti implied in the riddle that i don -an occasion when a door is not alari1' immediately throws us off our Kfif- is a suggestion which does I It js in with the re.st of our experience. SeCrHf disturbing element, a perplexity, Mia o which hides we know not what. J^eip 1 that Welshmen should love yie ^^Htry, is as it should be. Men ^th^H OVer give their hearts to their even primitive men whose ,Co«iprises only a few dirty half- 116 Sava.ges banded together under ^othino-1S a common totem. There is e?^riJL antagonistic to the rest of our fi ^ld iCe iJ1 the fact that Welshmen oi!0Ve their country. But that here's Hould be Welshmen who don't— ^aie ..e rnb. That there is not a ten \e A .Piece in the thirteen Counties L fS^icisers do not flaunt them- AereiIl .ai'y in the Welshman's face— vSHpi*8 ^le great anomaly. That the Pulpit er should be in the hall and the i, co+f ^e' schoolhouse, and even in alS ^OTV, XI s home that he should insult ^lk bi- i judicial bench, that he should ^i? ticai avely in the high places of our >Uld educational life; that he filling the richer homes of our IT Philistinism of English hi1^ mQi e—this and much more is s ^he Angliciser a national bec^ 110^e i" addition that a thing S a Problem to us when it in v^sse« oil us for solution. To W Se reading is confined to bv °& Old Testament or cram- ."amblyn Smith, the Higher jlrja in a not a problem at all or only LQ Pres« riK,,nieiitary degree. It dotes of on him for an answer. He ^itb«Ae Ps' an^ ascribes it to the in dail ado- But to a clergy- it i16l> th,.y tOUch with modern thought, kri.s a pmvV books or men of culture, soh^.s \VA1i °f prime importance. He I tlj) ^i°n 0r ? £ lough that either he finds a VftiTSetha.. Problem will swallow him xr^th his cause. Now to us *q. the Angliciser is such a pro- I If we do not proceed to deal with our problem in the one wise sure way, that is to say, if we do not see that in it which makes all things connected therewith plain, it follows that we will see all these things out of shape and upside down. We will exaggerate and distort the signifi- cance of details, we will ascribe wrong motives and bring in totally irrelevant matters. The problem will become that proverbial worm which never dies, causing a ceaseless inward chafing of the spirit. We will find ourselves calling very worthy squires in Breconshire a set of snobs, and kicking innocent maiden aunts and so forth. Look at Kensit try- ing to solve the problem of Catholic Christianity. Utterly negligent of its main principle, he expends all his energy on a mass of detail which he perceives all awry. Everything is evil which meets his gaze. He finds paganism, super- stition, ignorance, cunning, cruelty, and so forth, which undoubtedly are there, but which can in no way explain the existence of this mighty power. Pure cunning or pure ignorance or pure evil of any kind never can and never will bring anything into existence. Evil, like disease, only thrives on what is sound and whole. Nothing which has life, that is, which contains something sound and whole, can be explained by refusing to see the life. First find that, and then what evils thrive on it will be seen in their proper perspective. Or read the Church Times" dealing with subjects like Dr. Clifford and Welsh Radical Dissent. It perceives jealousy, rancour, ignorance, bigotry and so forth, which, or some of which at least, exist without doubt both in the Doctor and in Radical Dissent, but which do not explain the existence of these problems. And what good do Kensit or the Church Times" in these particulars? Are Rome and Oxford less strong because of Kensit? Is Dr. Clifford nearer to becoming a Church- man, or is Welsh Radical Dissent diminished one iota by methods of this kind ? As my eccentric friend Pebe- diocus has it-- Indeed (says he) it is well to remind thee, brother soul, that, if thou wert treated by Heaven as Rome by Kensit, or the Radical Dissent of our Welsh Fatherland by the Church Times,' there would be no hope for thee in the hour of thy sifting. Thou who lookest, for evil explanations in the problems of thy existence, what if thy evil were the only thing sought for in the problem of thee! For thou, too, art a problem, a thing out of joint in the universe, crying plaintively enough at times, 'How shall man be made one, bought back, rendered just! Such has been thy quaint speech hitherto. Shalt thou be made one or bought back by only considering thy broken worthlessness ? Shalt thou be rendered just by a denial of even thy capacity for justice ? Surely it is only yesterday and to-day that a reviving cry hath gone up from the Fatherland, even from Glamorgan to Anglesey. I stayed and listened, and the cry shaped itself thus in my ears— '0 Universal Wisdom, a Man in the midst of men is our hope, a Worth in the midst of unworthiness. Keep thine eye on that, for it alone can solve our problem.' And if this is the cry of thy heart, doth not thy stupidity perceive that this, too is the way in which thy little problems must be met one by one, by looking for that in them without which they could not be, by approach- ing them with a charity overflowing thy soul like that of God? It seems that the intense and possibly narrow nationalism which prevailed in Wales about the year 1500, had been invaded before the end of the 16th cen- tury by a new idea which spread widely and deeply, and which may be summed up in the phrase-" things English are of value." It is unfortunate that with the growing ascendancy of this opinion, there grew also with it the belief that things Welsh were of no value. And this so took possession of the influential families that by the 19th century things Welsh were not only regarded as useless, but also as vulgar. Even in the present year, 1905, Wales remains honeycombed with centres where this tradition reigns with all but unabated force. We thus immediately realise two facts:- (a) The Angliciser is not directly re- sponsible for his attitude, or in other words, he is such because he is born into it. All things in the history of our Breconshire squire have been mili- tating against his being a nationalist, for in his tender and plastic years all things were conspiring together to fill him with respect for things English and a corresponding indifference to things Welsh. As a boy he entered an English preparatory school, or a Welsh -Grammar School, which was worse. Ultimately he reached Christ Church or Sandhurst, and came forth equipped for life accord- ing to the tradition of the elders, which tradition issued in this invariable result that as far as "Vlaes was concerned he may as well have been educated in Kamschatka. If anyone desires to get an insight into the environment of the Welsh gentry in the 19th century, let him read a book called "Memoirs of Sir Llewelyn Turner," edited by Mr. J. E. Vincent, who is presumably a Welshman, trained in these traditions, and quite enthusiastic on their behalf. The one striking impression left by a perusal of this work, is that the society of which Sir Ll. Turner seems to have been a very worthy ornament, was air- tight to the ideals and enthusiasms of the nation whose gentry they were supposed to be. Now, if our perfervid Welshman who railed against the Breconshire squires had been born in that society, he could no more have helped being indifferent to Welsh ideals or contemptuous of them than the Shah of Persia can help being a Mohammedan. t (b) The Anglicise!* recruits his strength m that his traditions are still upheld by the Welsh County Families who set the standards of respectability; which means that as households rise in rank they naturally gravitate towards the social ideals which prevail in the world of gentility. Consider for example the lady who is concerned about her child's accent. Poor soul, what else can you expect from her ? She wants to be re- spectable and grand, and respectability and grandeur in Wales means to be as English as possible and to despise things Welsh. The Ladies' Academy, where perchance she boarded for two years, impressed on her mind the same idea. There she completed" her education in the usual accomplishments, French, drawing, music, &c., and thus she too went, forth, equipped, according to the traditions. Once we nationalists grasp these two tacts that Anglicisers are such because bhey are born into it, or are becoming such owing to forces which operate bliroughout all human society, we shall have gone a long way in solving this pressing national problem. Now we have seen that the positive position of the Angliciser is this—things English are of value. Herein no thinking person will disagree with him. We believe that in maintaining this position he is strong and unassailable; his house is built upon a rock. But this is not what makes him an Angliciser, otherwise all thinking men throughout the world would be such. It is his negative posi- tion which is the pivot of controversy, viz., things Welsh are of no value. Keeping our eyes fixed on this, we are close on the solution, and will proceed as follows. Supposing we begin by asking him whether he admits that there is such a country as Wales; that it contains a people called Welsh; that, they have a language of their own and a history of their own; that in the course of that history they have evolved distinctive social features by which they may be readily distinguished from another set of folk called English; that it is at least possible that no adequate knowledge of modern Wales is attainable by neglecting Welsh History and rigidly confining oneself to the History of England. Assuming him to be a fair and charitably minded person, we would naturally anticipate an answer in the affirmative. Suppose we then in- quired whether he seriously held that what pertained to this distinct community was absolutely of no value. He would certainly be forced to modify his previous assertion in some such way as this—" as compared with things English, things Welsh are of no value." I do not think that any Angliciser will accuse me of un- fairness in describing this as his funda- mental position. He would not be ashamed in the eye of light to defend himself thus-" When I compare things English with things Welsh, the latter are of no value." But my good and con- scientious friend, have you first of all compared your knowledge of the one and the other ? Do you not realise the gravity of the fact that all your education was carefully and deliberately directed to- wards providing you with a knowledge of things English and a corresponding ignorance of things Welsh, that your knowledge of the one is so grotesquely out of proportion to your knowledge of the other that it is more than probable that you are making a correspondingly grotesque statement? In short, that things Welsh are of no value to Angli cisers, because Anglicisers know nothing about them" ? Surely, this is the one great thing which sustains and enriches the Anglicising spirit in Wales-the un- abashed ignorance which prevails of things Welsh fostered as it is by a tradition so venerable that, it seems a heresy in the sight of thousands to point out so obvious a fact. What, then, are we nationalists to do? Certainly not to assume a stupid Byronic pose and wail about "the fate of the Celts" and such like twaddle, certainly not to scream irrelevant things against very worthy Breconshire squires, but to hasten the death of the old tradition by finishing the present prevailing ignorance. Welshmen must insist that no school or college in Wales (or Ladies' Academy either) shall continue to be breeding grounds for what has long since become a pest in the land. They must insist that Welsh History be made the basis of all historical study in Wales, from the ele- mentary school to the University College, and they must follow up this construc- tive policy by introducing the Welsh tongue not only in out of the way corners but throughout the thirteen counties from Chepstow to Holyhead. It must be made impossible for any family to live or settle in Wales without realising not only that things Welsh are of value, but that their value is recognised and cherished through- out the length and breadth of the land. There is one more point which demands notice before concluding, concerned with what passes in the ecclesiastical and poli- tical world of to-day as Welsh Nation- alism." The fact that the bulk of this party is composed of Radicals and Non- conformists, is sufficient indication that whatever may be thought of its nation- alism, there can be no manner of doubt as to its political and sectarian character. The chief factor in the movement is un- doubtedly Dissent, without which it is impossible to conceive the present poli- tical "status quo." And this appears plainly not only in the basic demand for Welsh Disestablishment, but also in the proceedings of the Welsh County Coun- cils and their Education Committees, where the claims of Nonconformity re- ceive by far the most prominent plaoe. The next important factor is Radicalism, and the third and last is Nationalism. But the three are quite distinct and have inly been accidentally thrown together by the common experience of finding them- selves new and therefore despised forces during one and the same period. The inadequacy of the old religion, poli- tics, and patriotism to meet the needs of Wales in former years, which three are represented to-day by the Church, Con- servatism, and Anglicisation, resulted in the growth of Dissent, Liberalism, and Nationalism respectively. These last were thrown together into an alliance as naturally and perhaps as inevitably as the Former, although each of the three in either category is quite distinct and in- dependent of the rest. It is possible, for 3xample, that Liberalism which has in 3ur time benefited by its alliance with Dissent, may be in alliance with the Ohurch before the present century is Dut. In like manner, the Welsh gentry )f the year 2005 may possibly be the very lackbone of Welsh Nationalism. But what I wish to point out now is that the atter is already suffering from its alliance with political Nonconformity, for this party, by assuming the national name, las given men the impression that Nationalism is only a controvertible term 'or Radical Dissent. Hence thousands of )ur countrymen who are Conservatives md Churchmen have been alienated from the cause of things Welsh and driven into the camp of the Anglicisers properly so called. And this again is one of the secrets of our problem. Moreover, Radi- cal Dissenters are by no means neces- sarily Nationalists. It is being constantly complained that the most respectable" families of Welsh Nonconformist congre- gations are ever tending to forsake things Welsh. The standards of respectability md grandeur set by the anglicising gentry ire too magnetic for them, whilst the sons going to the Grammar Schools and the daughters to the Ladies' Academies and the usual accomplishments, come out equipped according to the venerable tradition. What does all this signify? [t signifies of course that these good folk ire not nationalists, that they have no -eal sense of the value of things Welsh, but that in their hearts they despise