Welsh Journals

and addressed by Professor E. V. Arnold; the prosecution of J. H. Jones, editor of Y Brython, for being in breach of the Defence of the Realm Acts. A decisive factor was the advent of military conscription. The two Military Service Acts of January and May 1916 deeply alienated many Liberals who had originally accepted the necessity-even the righteousness-of the war but now saw universal male conscription as deeply injurious to the rights of free citizenship. The Welsh Liberal M.P.s offered little opposition to conscription in the House. Only a small handful voted against the two conscription acts; among them was E. T. John, the nationalistic Liberal member for East Denbighshire who was shortly to move into the Labour Party.44 The most influential rebel of all was W. Llewelyn Williams, member for Carmarthen Boroughs who, as has been seen, was in 1914 an ardent supporter of the war effort. He revolted fundamentally against conscription and developed henceforth an overwhelming, almost pathological, hatred for Lloyd George, long his close ally.45 Henceforth Llewelyn Williams was a powerful 'pacificist' recruit to the critics of the war. The growing publicity given to the plight of the conscientious objectors also aroused concern. A significant proportion of the 16,500 conscientious objectors in the 1916-18 period came from Wales, some objecting on Christian pacifist grounds, others on political, usually socialist.46 Some of the objectors, like the distinguished poet Thomas Parry-Williams, were able to continue with their professional interests, after a fashion. But many suffered for their faith. George Maitland Lloyd Davies, a man of deep humility, became the very symbol of self-sacrifice with his periods in prison in Wormwood Scrubs and elsewhere for his anti-war activities. Indeed, he was still in Winston Green prison, Smethwick, when the war ended and was not released until July 1919.47 Even many Liberals who did not share the absolutist pacifist philosophy that inspired George Davies felt deeply alienated by the manner in which local tribunals con- ducted their operations. The surviving records of the military tribunals for Cardiganshire, for instance, reveal the narrow social u Three Welsh Liberals (Llewelyn Williams, E. T. John and G. Caradoc Rees) voted against the first reading of the January 1916 Bill, and one (John) against the second reading. John had originally endorsed the war effort as a battle for Christian civilization; see 'Y Rhyfel-ei Achos, ei Amcan a'i Ganlyniadau', Y Cymro, 30 Medi 1914. cf. W. Llewelyn Williams to Arthur Ponsonby, 12 October 1920 (Bodleian, Ponsonby Papers, MS. Eng. Hist. c. 668, f. 32), in which he attacks Lloyd George as 'the Dictator'. Also Lloyd George to his wife, 12 August 1919 (Family Lettm, p. 190), in which he complains of Llewelyn Williams's 'intense personal bitterness'. For wartime conscientious objectors, see John Rae, Conscience and Politics (Oxford, 1970); David Boulton, Objection Overruled (London, 1967); and R. S. W. Pollard, Conscience and Liberty (London, 1940). 1 E. H. Griffiths, op. cit., pp. 100-9.