The Welshman’s premium as a music-hall joke is at a low ebb. Instead he is becoming a curio, an oddity to be discovered on a walking holiday in the Welsh mountains or during a stay at one of the remoter resorts. Strange things emanate from the land of Wales—the hidden meanings of a Dylan Thomas, the mystic spirit which captures the soul of a David Jones even before he sets foot in the country, the suspect magic in the oratory of a Lloyd George, the religious fervour of a rugger crowd swaying on the touch-line. For those who have the courage to penetrate there might be a glimpse of a woman in a tall Welsh hat (specially provided by the Tourist Board), the music of miners going to their work, the lilt of a language as old as Taliesin and as dark as Eryri. There is a growing feeling that there are strangers in our midst—their very name of Welsh means that.

The attitude of the outsider is normally one of two extremes— it is either an unstinted adulation based on an acquaintance with the great names of Wales or else one of a slightly contemptuous indifference based on a few unpleasant encounters with Welshmen and an impatience with a nation which has no right to survive beyond a quaint desire to preserve an archaic language and a tradition which, rich and picturesque though it might have been, is now only of use to the antiquarian.

The right of a nation to have its tradition and its culture recognized is a fundamental Christian value. Belief in the Incarnation does more than breed a respect for the sacf edness of the individual, for the individual implies the context into which he is inserted, the society in which he lives. Salvation is worked out here and now. It is dishonest to want to be someone else—and being ‘me’ means being me as member of this nation with its tradition and temperament, its culture and character.