Welsh Journals

that our moral and political and social traditions are a precious inheritance the loss of which would impoverish humanity; and that local patriotism is not incompatible with imperial loyalty. Holding this faith we wish in these pages to witness to the unity of our national life and to deepen and enrich it. This we would do not by refusing what other nations offer but by taking of their best, making it our own, and returning it with interest. We believe we can make some contribution, however small, to the common treasury of the nations, if we have the courage to be ourselves, and to put our trust in knowledge and discipline rather than in rhetoric and intrigue. There is latent in our people a desire for education and a sympathy with unselfish endeavour which if rightly guided should issue in social action of a fine idealistic quality. Some worthy embodiments of this spirit have been achieved in response to the vision of the leaders of yesterday and the day before. But ideals change with the growing experi- ence of the nation. To-day the urgent task is to define with the utmost precision possible the beautiful ideals of moral excellence." To every preacher and teacher and politician we would put the question What sort of Wales are you seeking ? What do you wish the country as a whole to be aiming at ? Young men and women are bewildered by the conflicting standards of the home, the workshop, the church and the newspaper. Systematic theology had the advantage of being systematic. An appeal could be made to a verbally inspired authority whose deliverances on all the main mysteries of life had been collected, classified and scheduled like a time-table for ready reference. The moral traffic of the world ran on two main lines, one with its train loads of good and the other with its train loads of evil. But to-day the trains have met on a maze of crossing lines in a fog. The signals are blurred and no one is quite certain on which line he is travelling or to what destination. To drop the metaphor, there is a profound change in moral valuations proceeding. Sixty years ago a Christian was expelled from his church for returning home on a Sunday morning to visit his wife who was reported to be dying. Our modem attitude to the Sabbath, to sport, to the drama are obvious examples of changing values. Industrial unrest is fundamentally an attempt to revalue man and to put a higher price upon him. The demand for a living wage at its highest is a demand for a minimum personality; at its lowest with certain concomitants it might put an end to all production. Individualism and Socialism are really ways of valuing certain human qualities and olac^" "orne higher, some lower, in the scale of honour. The attempt to arrive at some common estimate of the relative values of our manifold activities must be made if we are to move as one people towards high national ends. We produce coal by the million tons because we believe it to be essential to our welfare. We might build cottages, plan towns, plant forests, paint pictures, sing operas if we were equally convinced of their importance. We invite our readers to join us in the effort to make explicit the Christian ideals we vaguely hold and to bring them into some sort of relation to the realities which surround us. This is the religious enterprise upon which this journal now embarks. Its founders are under no illusion as to the difficulties in the way but they also know that unless more is done to clarify our social outlook and to unite our scattered efforts we must cease to be a nation. The imagination of our people must be possessed with the vision of a better Wales to the fashioning of which our wills must be strained. In this way, and in this way only, will the humblest citizen feel his lowliest duty exalted, for it will be done not for himself but for his country.