Cylchgronau Cymru

VOLUME XV THE NUMBER VII WELSH OUTLOOK Where there is no vision thelpeople perish NOTES OF THE MONTH WE wish to associate ourselves with Mr. Forsdike's tribute to the directors and proprietors of the Western Mail for the labour of love which brought into being our National War Memorial in Cathays Park. The shrine is very graceful; its setting perfect. It will rank with the most beautiful of the war memorials, and it is (as nearly as can be) a worthy expression of our nation's pride and grief for the sons who did not return to her. To those who were present at the unveiling by the Prince of Wales, the ceremony, so movingly impressive in its simplicity, will be a rich memory of a people's united homage. It remains for all of us, as Sir Cecil Harcourt Smith said, to see that the memo- rial commemorates not the hatreds nor the pas- sions nor the manifold evils of war, but rather that glorious spirit of unity and kinship with one another which the war evoked. WE, like everybody else, have said in a previous issue most of what we have to say on the agitating question of the rejection of the Prayer Book, but the fact that the House of Commons has rejected it a second time and with a slightly increased majority, ob- viously needs some comment. That august assembly is clearly gaining confidence in singing the "No Popery" chorus, and it is fairly clear now, we think, that as far as Prayer Book re- vision is concerned the Protestant choir will never be given another opportunity of singing so defi- nitely in unison. There is obviously no need for the most timid and fearful Protestant in the land to lose an hour's sleep from any terror at the JULY 1928 possibility of Papal aggression in this country. It is still interesting to observe that that Erastian wolf, Sir William Joynson-Hicks, led once more scores of Liberationist lambs into his lobby, and it is obvious that for the moment he must have been the impersonation of benevolence itself to them. It is, however, open to question whether he will not show his teeth when they come pleading for his aid (as some of them must) to loose them from their shackles. On this occa- sion, however, they were perfectly entitled to take some pleasure in the implications of attitude and action of Sir William and his friends, for, as Mr. Birrell said, what room can there be now in the Established Church of England for the right, almost if not quite the divine right, of episcopacy and episcopal government The lights of one of the three golden candlesticks have been blown out, and it is made clear once for all that Macaulay was right when he stated in a headnote to his great Whig history that the Church of England originated at the Reforma- tion." Until that great Church faces the inevit- able issue of Disestablishment it is one of the fundamental principles of the British Constitution affirmed twice within a year by the House of Commons, that Nonconformists, Agnostics, Hindus, and Mahomedans (if in a majority in Parliament) have the power and right to deter- mine what prayers the clergy and the laity of the Church of England shall say publiclv in their Churches. There is something grotesque in the fact that a strict Baptist, say, may have a voice on the Prayer Book to be lawfully used in, say, Lord Halifax's Church; but it is for the Church itself to remove the anomaly.