WAR REFUGEES — Says Mr.
Saunders Lewis
From Our Welsh Correspondent Wales is just getting over the crisis, and the latest storm in a teacup is connected with it.
Mr. Saunders Lewis, Welsh Nationalist leader, said publicly in Wrexham when discussing revelations made to the country during the crisis, that the prolonged and compulsory billeting of English refugee children in Welsh homes during war meant the final destruction of the Welsh nation.
He demanded the right for Wales to make her own conditions concerning the vast influx of population and to be granted the right to guard her life and language from submergence.
This is not an uncharitable refusal to protect refugees (even though there may be ample room in rural England for them), but is motivated by the entire lack of control of conditions of refuge by the people of Wales who have quite enough to contend with in an educational system which considers the teaching of Welsh history or language as matters of secondary importance
" Another's Battle-Cry "
Another effect of the recent shock has been to intensify the zeal of all kinds of pacifist and peace organisations in Wales. Probably the pacifist movement draws much support from negative sources—for instance, lack of instinctive response to another nation's battle-cry, but on the other hand there is a genuine and enlightened desire in Wales to secure peace in international affairs.
Also, Wales is being very thick-headed over A.R.P., and parodies of A.R.P. instructions are circulating as comic songs in the university colleges.
Meanwhile Wales reviews her own internal position with concern.
Yet another winter arid nothing for the unemployed but the prospect of reduced means at home or departure from Wales.
Small wonder that prostitution is on the increase in the valleys of South Wales solely as a means of earning money to feed hungry children and to keep homes together.
It is this amazing love of and devotion to homes and families that protect the remnants of humanity in industrial Wales.
In yet another sphere depopulation has played its part.
The percentage of university students is down this year by 20 per cent.
The last years have shown a steady decrease and the University of Wales views with concern the prospect of diminishing revenues. The prospect of fewer students may not be bad for securing a higher standard of scholarship, but even scholarship today has forsaken Sister Poverty.