Cylchgronau Cymru

activity with skill and considerable sensitivity. In a biography which is much more an intellectual history than an event-by-event Life, he traces the considerable impact of this man of strong even compulsive constructive bent-a builder rather than a digger, in contrast to his mentor, Maurice- on the aspirations of his age. Ludlow had such an impact because his aims harmonized so well with the feelings of the skilled workers in the period between the extra- parliamentary associations of the thirties and forties and the New Unionism of the eighties and nineties. His socialism was not that of the state but of mutual aid and co-operative self-help, his ideal not just the eradication of poverty but the destruction of the competitive ethic of a laisser-faire society, his means not state action but democratic endeavour. It was to further these essentially moral concerns that he sought to fuse Christianity and socialism. Yet, although these concerns struck an answering chord in the working class movement, and although Ludlow was to play a large part in the development of trade unions, friendly societies, adult education, and consumer co-operatives, the producer co-operative movement which most fully embodied his Christian Socialism did not have the same success. As Masterman points out, this failure can be ascribed in part to Ludlow himself, too committed a radical always to travel in harness with his Christian colleagues, too concerned a Christian to work easily with non-Christian co-operators. But there were wider reasons-the workers' lack of managerial experience, the luke-warmness of the trade unions, the structure of large scale industry. This failure makes Masterman perhaps too apologetic about the place of Ludlow in the whole socialist movement and about the relevance of his ideas in the mid-twentieth century. The practical suggestions he drew from Christian Socialist principles were not lost on later thinkers such as Tawney and Cole; and the problems of industrial democracy still await solution. It is one of the virtues of this sympathetic biography that it leads us out from Ludlow to these wider considerations. JACK LIVELY. University of Sussex. THE PROBLEM OF WALES AND OTHER EssAYS. By J. F. Rees. University of Wales Press. Cardiff, 1963. Pp. 146. 15s. 'What, then, is the value of the study of history? It is that. it teaches us what questions to ask about the present' (p. 115). This attractive volume affords us ample evidence of how Sir Frederick Rees has been able to carry out this precept in practice. It contains in all eleven contri- butions, articles, lectures, and broadcast talks, and forms a most appropriate tribute to Sir Frederick on his eightieth birthday. While more scattered in subject-matter and approach than his previous Studies in Welsh History, this compilation does illustrate the range of his interests,