[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIRS Mr. Goronwy Rees's
defence of Welsh nationalism in your last week's issue was finely reasoned. From the remoteness of his study he seems to have elaborated, with wonderful historical moderation, a most winning apology. So, too, in distinguished Roman salons, one may be persuaded to a distant appreciation of the ways and ends of Fascism, only, in turn, to feel revulsion at the brawling immediacy of the Piazza Venezia. For, in his capacity of an advocate, Mr. Rees has displayed a quality to the very lack of which the Welsh Nationalists owe their modicum of notoriety—a sense of perspective.
I had not gathered, from my perusal of Mr. Saunders Lewis's speeches, from my reading of the arson of last year, that the nationalism of Wales and the nationalisms of the Continent lay so far apart. True, there is the difference of proportions. Italy and Germany are acknowledged sovereign nations , the assertion of their nationhood is, in accordance with that rank, bloated and bellicose. Nationalism in Wales could not, from its infinitely smaller beginnings, swell to such aggressiveness. That apart, the spirit, it seems to me, is essentially the same. There is the same sublimation of whai it is that constitutes the nation—of Welshness as of Itediamitt; and Deutschtum. Springing from it, there is the same wild vehemence of denunciation, the same ostentatious defiance 'DI proprieties, the same startling of a lethargic public by gratuitous martyrdom, the same convenient and pragmatic interpretation of law and morality.
Most Welshmen, I imagine, wish .the language (and with it the culture) to live. Not a few would agree with Mr. Rees that the best way to ensure its vitality is to endow it with a status, to accord it some recognised utility in practical life. But, in pursuit of that end and in contrast with the Nationalists, they would shun the revolutionary and the demagogic. To proclaim that in these days is, no doubt, to brand oneself an inhibited and ineffectual individualist. But, after all, Stresemann
was no less a good German than is Hitler.—Yours faithfully, 2 Craven Hill Gardens, W. 2, AUBREY JONES.
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