"Breathes there the man with soul so dead who never to himself hath said This is my own, my native lan Scott's familiar lines serve to recall that love of country expressing itself nobly, especially the nostalgia of the wanderer even though his exile be voluntary, is one of the most poignant and universal of human emotions. Today the Welsh community in Shanghai in common with their fellow countrymen the world over express their love of the land of their fathers in the celebration of their patron saint—David. Saint David belonged to the sixth century A. D. the same period as King Arthur, when the Cymry were fighting to preserve their country against the nvasions of the Angles and Saxons after the withdrawal of the Roman legions. While the struggle for political unity found its express sion in the romances of Arthur, St. Davi who is historically known as a great theologian and national leader, built his church where the cliffs of Western Wales look over the seas to Ireland and represents the triumph of the Celtic Church which had fostered Christianity in the country two centuries before the coming of St. Augustine to convert the Angle-land that had once been Britain. Its two traditional champions Arthur and David are symbolical of the two-fold development of Wales. In its national intensity it has maintained its ancient tongue as the living language of the country today, while its widespread love of music and poetry and zeal for learning and religious fervour are responsible for the establishment of an Eisteddfod, Welsh choirs, Welsh newspapers and Welsh Churches in every country where the Welsh have settled, even in inhospitable Patagonia and among the modern and practical organs of opinion in the United States. At the same time the adventurous spirit and the imagination of its people have contributed very materially to the building of the British Empire, although historians have not applied their principles of national recognition as adequately to Wales as they have to England Scotland and Ireland.
There is an unfortunate tendency to assume that Wales went to sleep after the Edwardian wars and did not wake again till the revival of the 18th and the 19th centuries, and did not produce men of note till the Empire entrusted its fortunes in a dark hour of its history to the care of a Welsh Prime Minister—Mr. Lloyd George. From Cressy and Agincourt where the Welsh archers won victories for England to the present day the levies and requirements of Wales have done their duty. Henry VII, a Welshman leading a Welsh army, founded the Tudor dynasty with which the Welsh ceased to be rebels, and entered heartily into the new life of the period from its great advisers like the Cecils, Clough and Archbishop Williams to its literature and even piracy. Wales shared fully the boundless hopes and adventurous spirit of England during the Elizabethan age.
Thomas Morgan led the volunteers from Britain to the Low Countries to help William the Silent in that home of European liberty. Roger Williams the companion of Humphrey Gilbert fought for the Dutch in the Netherlands and led the cavalry that was to oppose e Spaniards landed by the Armada. The t celebrated of all the buccaneers Henry Morgan, was a yeoman farmer of Llanrhymny in Glamorganshire. Many of the adventurers of the time who sailed from Bristol and the Severn were Welsh and one of the most remarkable was Captain Bartholomew Roberts of Haverfordwest in Pembrokeshire who seemed to attain most nearly to the popular pirate of fiction except in the fact of being almost the only recorded teetotaller known to the fraternity. While the Welsh fought for Charles I in the Civil War Cromwell who was of Welsh descent and some of his fellow countrymen who signed the death warrant of Charles initiated the Reformation which ultimately converted Wales to Pro-restantism and a severe Puritanism.
A Cymric contribution to the larger movements of the World was made in the Declaration of Independence whose author Thomas Jefferson from the mountains of Snowdon crowned the discoveries of Prince Modog who the Welsh claim sailed westwards with his fleet and discovered America two centuries before Columbus. While in the realm of literature its best and strongest thought has been given to its native poetry, Wales has given England thoughts that have not been forgotten from Shakespeare who came from the Welsh marches to George Herbert and Henry Vaughan and from John Dyer to William Morris. In the development of British art it is represented by Richard Wilson, John Gibson, Hume Jones and Frank "Wales today plays its full part with its sister countries of the British Isles. and England is happily ended. Stil in its The old period of antagonism between Wales
intense conservatism, Wales preserves its culture and its customs. Never has the Welsh tongue so flourished as a literary language as today or become so widely spoken amongst all classes in Wales and abroad. It has been asked, whether the maintenance of a national language and national aspirations in a corner of the British Isles can be inimical to the strength and unity of the whole. Are excellence and progress in the present civilization to be looked for in the elimination rather than the development of special types of excellence? Does the growth of local or national patriotism imply the sughest disloyalty to the Crown or disruption in the Empire or is it antagonistic in any way to the larger federation of the British Imperial Union? The living fact of the British Empire gives the lie to any such doubts as these. The British Empire must be the house of many mansions in which there shall be room for each and all to develop to the fullest his personal and his national contribution to the common and united welfare and strength of an indivisible whole. The history of the past gives many instructive examples of the strength and importance of developing local and national life. Happy the Great Power which in the hour of peril, and not only in the hour of peril but in the long years of strain and rivalry such as those which the world is pas: ing through in the present day, can rely not only upon the life and opinion of the capital, but upon the new and perennial springs of energy and vitality which rise in all parts of the land. Happy indeed will be the Great Power which can achieve the necessary centralization of a modern scientific State without starving or stifling the fullest development of national and local life.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.