The Cambria Daily Leader

I The Day's Gossip.j Leader" Office, Tuesday. Sir Owen M. Edwards-" O.M." to Wales—has left a class of disciples behind him at Terrace-road Boys' School as a consequence of his half hour's visit yes- terday. He put the lads some posers in the way of deciding between Nelson, Well- ington and the man who brought the cherry tree to England—who was he?-as most worthy a national memorial; and, in consonance with the 6pirit of tiip age, got. from a son of a musician, an answer fav- ouring the claims of the cherry-tree man. Then (so one of the scholars told me with intense appreciation) he told the boys of prehistoric reptiles whose breakfast would .have included the whole class as a first course or an appetiser. O.M.'s charm worked powerfully, and though to young- sters the backs of most inspectors are pre- ferable to their faces, they don't mind when he comes again. Old Wind Street. I I have among my Swansea collection of books and prints, which is smaller than I would like it to be, a print of a copper plate engraved after a picture by Butler, of Wind-street. It shows the London coach drawn up before the old Mackworth; op- posite. the Cambrian office, and the establishments of W. M. Brewster, book- seller and stationer, of Mr. Young, sad- dler, and of the London Tea Company. Yesterday, at the Arts and Crafts Com- mittee, I saw the original water colour— the copper plate is a somewhat free copy— which had been offered to the Gallery by Mr. H. Lloyd, of London. I am glad to say that the Committee decided to pur- chase it, and to offer the Royal Institution —as the rightful repository of such his- torical things—the option of repurchase at the same figure. The artistic qualities of the picture are not great, but for the I Swansea boy who loves his town it has a value of its own. I Souvenirs Instead. We were looking at a number of war: souvenirs—which prompted Mr. Roger Beck to say that a ship load of German helmets had been brought into Llanelly— to be .melted down, and turned to indus- I trial uses. As neat an example of Micah IV., 3, as I have heard of. From Swansea, Arizona. An old friend of mine, now in the United States cavalry, and wearing the Mexican ribbon, Captain Gil Davies, is spending a brief leave in Swansea from France. It is ten years and more since he went out, as a young architect, to the Far West," and eventually settled for a time with Mr. George Mitchell at Swan- sea,, in Arizona; but he joined up from California, where he had a goodly busi- ness, and incidentally a charming wife and baby-boy. Gil "—the son of the late Mr. Sam Davies of Weaver's—is twice the size of the thin and pale lad who left Swansea for the west, and of course he has been Americanised. On the Verdun front, hundreds of machinc-gun men passed through his hands, and he tells me I that the end of the show came just as\ the U.S. was ready to pull its full weight. But all the same, in the Argonne and at St. Mihiel our cousins gave a wonderful taste of their quality. I The Peacock. I How many people, I wonder, have ro cognised the raucous cry that can be hoard intermittently all day in any of the streets between Brymnill School and the I Park and around Knoll-avenue? Yet hundreds daily stand and watch the peacock. No 6troll through the Park is complete unless you have paid a visit to his house in the hope that he is keeping his tail up." Two bantams and a couple of doves share his allotted space. As he sits on his perch he is equally wonderful whether he is displaying the glory of his broast and neck, changing from green to blue, of a lustre that only the richoot onamel can express, or when, with his back disdainfully turned on an admiring crowd, he shows the faultless markings that carry the design of his tail right up to the arch of his graceful neck. It seems an outrage that those bantams should strut about below him-he is too noblo a bird to be made a figure in a Dignity and Impudence" scene. Then he opens his mouth—the god totters. The Feet of Clay." I A keeper throws in a handful of corn, 1 and in more sonses than one lie comes off Ins pedestal, only to rise agyin as you I watch with awe his stately pa vane as he mores majestically towards the uteiti ho must share with his meaner com- panions. Once more the feet of clay are r,bc)wn as he picks greedily at the food. I hut hM grœd is tho prelude to hh ¡ grandest moment. A bantam snatches a morsel u-om under his b?k. Th?ro is a rustle like wind over dry leaves, a catch- jug of breaths, and the hundred eyes of I Argus are set quavering before a dazzled Kroup Only ov?r a handful of ccrn I i 'know, hut what can ,ou say-we ?or?hip i aim in that mom? as the o?c?.n? did— i unloss tbe moralist in ns conquers and :1 wo gay vvith Browning: Had you, with those the smile. but brought a mind: I I Brightening Landore. 1 it :s saw that some recent applicants hr posos at Swansea nearly decided to •abandon the idea when they reached oandore, and to return without ulHJor- Koing the interviews that would decide nieir acceptance or otherwise. That. alter seeing the better Swansea they did uot regret sticking to the train a little onger, can be taken for granted. This incicrnt is not recorded in order to pro- ride another inducement to the G W R to push people into Swansea a little quicker less their stay at Landore should prompt them to return without combir furthor, but merely to point out that some Landore people think their co- burgesses in other brighter, less smoky and altogether more attractive neigh- bourhoods do not sufficiently realise that it is their duty to see that their less for- tunate brethren have as many bright, sweet things as the rates can be reason- ably expected to provide. Thus they bemoan the fact that the Llewelyn Park, the only really bright spot in the place, is still a howling wijderness." and that there is no sign of the com- mencement of the open-air swimming bath that the war delayed. For winter use mainly the more ambitious artisans use mainly for an up-to-date haJJ, but I it is understood that more are willing to talk than to work, and that this idea does not progress because of the lack of genera) drawings which, naturally, works' proprietors want to seo before promising support.

?Thmugh a Cottage 16 d Wm d ow. I XX!.—The Oath of the Forty-One. By George W. Gough. It would be a great help to us if we could find an example of the making of a State. Unfortunately, States are not cup- boards or suits of clothes, and no such example is known, and, quite obviously no such example is knowable because none ever occurred. The State is not a mechani- cal contrivance, made by man at his own sweet will during A short, ascertainable stretch of time. He can unmake it, quickly enough, when he sets about it at his own unsweet will, but that is another matter—one of the dreadful ironias of his- tory. Therefore one off the things that men have long tried to do is to imagine how the State came into being. They have formed theories of the origin of the State. One of the most famous of these theories is expounded in that old book by Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury to which I called your attention in one of the earliest of these papers-the" Leviathan." Hobbes puts the theory so well, so logically, so forcibly that Oxford men to-day still have to read parts of the Leviathan" for their final examinations, and you would be well adv-ised to read a little of it your- selves. The theory of IIobbcs is that the State began in a formal contract, deliberately entered into by men when they were in a state of nature in order to avoid the inconveniences of that nasty, brulish age when every man did just what WAS right in his own CYûS, and was king unto him- &elf. So they agreed that one or more of their number, a definite living person or body of living persons, should have full power over all the others. In this way the State, consisting of a sove.reign who commands absolutely and subjects who obey implicitly, came into existence. The State began in a Social Contract, and a century later Jean Jacques Rousseau was to write a book with this very title, expounding this very theory in words of golden fire that were destined to eet Europe alight. A REAL SOCIAL CONTRACT. It is a curious fact that THE power of a political theory to move the hearts of men has no relation at all to its scientific value. For it is the object of a theory to account for known facts; it ration- alises them, telling us how they came to b) thus, teaching us that they cannot be otherwise, and so making us content to deal with and use them as we find them. modern teachers. Maine being for Englishmen the first and best, showed that the theory of Hobbes was simple nonsense. It has more holes in it than a ladder, and the biggest hole or all is that it supposes that men made a contract at a time and in a social stage when no living man had the foggiest notion of what a contract was. There is, however, on record one most interesting and fascinating case of just such a Social Contract. On November 11th, 1620, a tiny ship lay off Cape Cod in the land-locked bay of the same name in the coast of Massachusetts. It was the famous Mayflower," with about a hund- red English folk on board. They were flee- ing from one State, England, because they could not find there liherty to worship God in their own way, and these grand 01<' fathers bothered VERY little about what wages they got and how many hours they worked and troubled themselves vf-ry greatly about the things of the eonj. i T.ihefty of conscience they prized above all things, and, to get it. they were quite con- tent to put themselves into economic bondage, and to start life in the un- touched wilderness. The little ship was at anchor before a place fit for situa- tion." THE long voyage was over. the new life was beginning, and this is how they began it. Hobbes, at thi, time, a man of thirty-two, was not to pu.b- LISH his Lrvi,-itba.,n for another thirtv years, nnd the Pil<rrira Fathers" had probably never heard OF those authors earlier than Hobbes who HID hinted at the -it f l i?p idea he was to make world-famous. But, bring Englishmen, with the ingrained English habit of obedience to laws made by themselves, they assembled and drew up a real Social Contract, and so made a real State. THE MAKING OF A STATE. You will, Pm sure, like to read thÜ memorable document, sealed, signed and settled by these simple, strong, English folk, in the cabin of the "Mayflower," with the grey seas rolling without, and the bleak shore looming across the bay, near on three hundrixl years AGO. We, whose names are under-written, the lovall subjects of our dread sovereign Lord. King James, by ye Grace of God of Great Bntaine. Franc, and Ireland King, defender of ye faith. &c., haveing under- taken, for ye- glorie of God and advance- ;ncmte of ye Christian faith, and honour of our king nnd conn trie, a VOYAGE to plant. ye first colonie in ye Nortiierne V-IRT3 of Virginia, doe by tlic,-ct presents solemnly and mntualv in ye presence of God. and one of another, covenant and. combine ourselves TOGETHER into a civill body politick, for our better ordering and preservation and further- ance of ye ends aforesaid; and by ,-ertne hearof to enact, constitute and fi-.mme such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and officos. from time to time, AS shall he thought most M^ETE I and convenient for ye general good of ye I J Colonie, into which we promise all due 611 bmission and obedience." The alldt males of the company, forty- j one in number, signed this compact, and then elected John Carver as their first governor. They L he L landed, called the place Plymouth, after the last old Eng- Ush town they had seen, and then. through years of hard work and grinding poverty, built up New England, and made it fit to become in due time the corner stone of the United States. I THE ROOT IDEA. I Nothing is more certain than that the State did not begin like this, as Hobbes thought it did. Those Pilgrim Fathers were not primitive men, with unformed minds, dwelling in Neolithic caves, or pre-historic men, just a stage or two ad- vanced, clanging sword in buckler in some old German ian forest. They were English men, with a long tradition be- hind them, with full experience of civi- lisation in its flowering time. Shakespeare was only four years dead, John Milton was a boy of eleven, Oliver Cromwell I' just entered on his moody young mau- liood. Everything that Hobbcs theorised as present was absent, and everything I abfont that he announced wa.s present. Yet these men, purposing to make a State. a dvill body politick," in the wilds untrodden by the fo-ot of the white 1 man, did make a solemn compact with one another so to do. In our own history there is of course no similar document. We have famous agreements between king and people, governor and governed, sovereign and subject, but no such agreement one with another. Yet though the con-tract theory is unhistorical and impossible, it does not follow, that it has nothing to teach us. Quite otherwise is the truth. For though society is not the result of a specific contract, binding in law and conscience on each member of society, though each of us, for example, became an Englishman through processes we could neither initiate nor control, it is clear that society would fall to pieces unless all the citizens are actuated by motives closely similar to those which urge A man to abide by a contract he has made. A contract is a drawing together" of the PARTIES to it. What draws them together? I reply, the noblest foroe that operates in nature—faith in one anouier. fcvery day in London city, thousands of men make contracts with one another, which they implicitLy carry out. One of them loses by doing so, for they are contracts for tae sale of shares which are continually varying in price. To these contracts there are no such written evidences of a true and just con- sent of minds as a court of law requires before it will enforce a contract. Yet these unsigned, often even unspoken, contracts are habitually and punctually carried out. Unless we had faith in one another, we could not exist an hour as a State and not many days as individuals. Lot us take this root idea of the State with us through all our subsequent thinkings on the Social Question. The foundation of the State is the faith of all citizens in one another's steadfast- ness of purpose to strive to realise the ends for which the State exists. If the forty-one had each gone his own way on !anaing, there would have been no State of New England, and soon no citizens either. The wilds would have eaten them up one by one, and this great and deliberate experiment in State-making would never have come to fruition. The State IG something more than a mass of individuals. In- dividuals have got to have something in common before they can become citizens of a State. They need a common mind and a common purpose. Unless this truth is realised and acted upon, destitution is at hand. Tç-day we are insistently told by shallow, but suc- cessful and popular thinkers, that society is not a whole but a collection of parts; I that it has no common purpese but is a | .?eet1)ing mass of antagonistic interests. T'J? class war doctrine of the Social- ists is the very negative of the State as it IS had as the result of its past history. The notion that a mire-owner cannnt be a citi- zen, with just the same interests in his capacity of citizen as a miner, that a mil- lionaire is tahoo because he is a million aire, MAY tickle the palates of foolish I"pl(,, wl,() are not. but greatly desire to be, mine-owners and millionaires, but as social teaching it is mere gub nonsense. The forty-one knew better. Twelve of their number in the list are carefully des- cribed as Mr." One of them was elected as governor. They recognised both their private distinctions and their social one- ness. They had no idea of THE class war biit-tlipy set afoot the Great Republic of the West And that was something.

 The FREEDOM j d r'- J)) of the SEAS. IS J  1\ 1? 's'n their ,mailer comequences < I! -4-1 /v Pi jr$3 | that ? ?"? mean?got mighty deedøl' £: '{f/ are seen. Thus wi'ie,-i a Battle Fleet J are seen. Thus w h en a Battle Fleet £ I' I ???S?&T?? surrenders to BEATTY and a shoej f I °? U-Boat. to TYRWHITT, the' ?=??"??si???? !i l}'i ?'i??'? landsmen scarcely comprehends. II of <omc War j :-????????????????? But when instead of some "War !? Marmalade" there appears upon his |i | Breakfast table, dainty, delightful, J | delicious j jfligp 'C1 joMeo i Sbfed I ;c. :O'= re II .1 -=- Marmalade j I-=:¿-t. = -=- h.. J h h F d E 1.. I t h en is it clear that the Free dom of the | i I Seas is once more won for Civilization. il = F ..1' f 11' For civilization is after all, just a I question of standard and refinement I F _'? =- hence the huge demand for § | ????????? Golden Shred, the hi?hpst atandarj 1 i ???=?5? ?—?  J   ? and the very refinement of Marmalade j 7"' manufacture. ?—'  manufacture. ???°'?* ?'? c;rcumstawes pamik- ==  ? ? !h<di do our utmMt to .upp!y aH  | Sooo—as fajf as drenmsfanew permit— ft | | •- — 2^3= Sg|r do our utmost to supply all demands. g only maker* j -¡- _-r- II OCULISTS' -Ií& I TWO QUALIFIED 9 3 PRESCR!PT?OMS. vl. OPTICIANS A R K ???? !M A"'fENDANCL H ? ? The majority of LMMa- 1 1 W .?M m?heat MMI H Kimmed or Rimless, W Th.B?Workm??. 63 Spherical, Astigmatic or T Absolute icconoy of ? H Meniscus—are ground in out B | Lens". BB I 0?1 Workshop. 8 Perfect Fitting Frame& jjj C. F ■ WALTERS, I 226, Oxford Street, I SWANSEA. jj

ACQUISITION OF LAND BILL. I The Acquisition of Land Bill now before Parliament was referred to at Monday's meeting of the Swansea Parliamentary Committee, the Town Clerk dealing with the changes proposed in the law as to the powers of local authorities in oompul- sorily acquiring land. A Manchester Town, Council resolution expressed the view that the provisions of t1.. Bill were iriadequate to enable local II authorities to acquire land for public pur- poses, and urging upon Parliament the introduction of legislation to enable local authorities by simple and expeditious pro- cess to acquire land compulsorily for PUb-II lic purposes in any area, at any time. without compensation for compulsory pur- chase. and at a price based on the assess- ment. for rating purposes. It was agreed to support the resolution.

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