Welsh Journals

liest surroundings. For it is as the servant of the beautiful that he meets the deepest needs. To bring beauty into the common lot by revealing its presence is his greatest mission. Above all we would do well to remember that however rich in promise the future may be, its ful- filment depends on the intensity of our longing and the height of our aspiration. If we would see the life of the next generation richer and more beautiful than that of the last, we should raise our standards and foster a spirit of higher expectancy. If we be- lieve in the noble, the good, and the true, the beau- EVOLUTION OR REVOLUTION. [EDITOR'S NOTE-The following is extracted from a speech delivered to University Settlement workers at Cardiff by Principal Burrows. It seemed to us, on hearing it, so appropriately to crystalise the aims and desires of "The Welsh Outlook," that we have no hesitation in reproducing it here, with his permission. After meeting the objections that had been fired at the University Settlement by extremists on both sides- (i) of being a Conservative Agency. (ii) a Liberal Caucus-Principal Burrows continued: But there is something deeper than this, which we settlement workers have to face-the aloofness and distrust that many of the richer class feel to any movement, however well meant and fairly managed they acknowledge it to be, which aims at persuading members of their class to deal with working people as equals, to discuss their aspirations without pre- judice, and to cultivate friendly and sympathetic personal relations with all sections of them, whatever their views. It is true that the settlement worker or the W.EA. lecturer, Conservative or Whig as he may still remain, is a different sort of Conservative or Whig from what he was before he took up the work; that he has a broader view of the situation than the man in the street of his own class that he knows the ropes of the Labour movement, and does not lump together all the phases of it that he does not assume offhand that a Trade Union official is a Socialist, or even if he is that he is therefore a fierce creature with a red tie and a bomb in his pocket. Miss Horniman told me that when Galsworthy's Strife was first put on the stage, they had a dis- cussion as to the dressing of Harness, the typical Trade Union Official. Should he have a red tie? It was decided that to give him a red tie would be amateurish. Miss Horniman' stage manager knew his ropes. And it is just this knowing the ropes, this refusal to dress trade unionists in red ties which tiful will follow in their train. Beauty will not come at the call of a legislature. it will come, as always, unannounced and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men." For what is Beauty ? It is fitness, health, and right proportion, and the outer and visible beauty is only the sign and symbol of the inner and invisible. Viewed from this high vantage ground, art, the creation and revelation of beauty, acquires a pro- found spiritual value, and until we have given it its rightful place we have failed to catch one half of the rich meaning of life. is profoundly disquieting to one type of employer. As it appeared to old Anthony, the splendid represen- tative in that very play of Galsworthy of the Indus- trial Autocrat, it is the mark of a Soft-breed." Trade Unionists should have red ties, and should be branded as red-tied. Tout savoir c'est tout pardonner. If you realise them as individual human beings, you are in danger of sympathising with them, and your battle for your privileges is half lost already. What d'you imagine." says Anthony to his daughter Enid, when she is pleading for the men's cause, What d'you imagine stands between you and your class and these men you're so sorry for ? In a few years you and your children would be down in the condition they're in but for those who have the eyes to see things as they are and the backbone to stand up for themselves. What sort of mercy do you suppose you'd get if no one stood between you and the continual demands of labour? This sort of mercy — (he puts his hand up to his throat and squeezes it). First would go your sentiments, my dear, then your culture, and your comforts would be going all the time." A man like Anthony, if he were logical, would be dead against University Settlements. He would not be a cruel man in private life. Galsworthy, who has the true dramatic power of seeing both sides of a question, makes him not only upright and a fine fighter, but a kind man to his own family and his immediate dependents. One may be a wolf to other men," as the pawnbroker said, but it's the little wolves at home that justify it." What deter- mined Anthony's industrial attitude was his deliberate