Cylchgronau Cymru

Chwiliwch trwy dros 450 o deitlau a 1.2 miliwn o dudalennau

VOLUME XVI WELSH OUTLOOK IDLENESS is a soul-destroyng business, affecting the mind and spirit of a man as well as his physique, and depression in the coal- fields is due in part to other needs than those which the Lord Mayor's Fund is attempting to meet. Many of the people in the valleys of South Wales need not only relief of physical distress, but release from the spiritual dullness which too easily spreads during a long period of privation. Here and there the extra-mural work of the University, the Joint Tutorial Classes Committees, the W.E.A., and other educational bodies, has provided occupation of mind for some group of men. The National Council of Music has done what it could to encourage part singing and other musical activities. But those who have done most are the first to realise how much more could be done. Like others they, too, have suffered from the poverty which has conditioned life in South Wales in recent years. Now the National Council of Social Service in London has set up a special committee to consider how new impetus can be given to all such work- adult education, music, drama-in South Wales and in the Northern coalfield, the two areas where the depression has been most acute. Under the chairmanship of Dr. Tom Jones, the committee has made a useful start by enlisting the help of the Carnegie Trustees. A fund of ^5,000 is being used to meet the cost of lectures and concerts, to finance visits by choral societies, choirs, and dramatic societies, to provide instruction in massed singing in centres where nothing of this Where there is no vision the people perish NOTES OF THE MONTH THE MAY 1929 kind has been possible of late. An attempt is being made to reach as many people as possible during the next three months, and already large and enthusiastic gatherings have shown their ap- preciation. But all this should be regarded merely as ground bait to be followed by more intensive and systematic work. It is greatly to be hoped that what has begun so well will not be left un- finished, and that where an appetite has been aroused means will be found to satisfy it. In South Wales the work is under the direction of a local committee which includes representatives of the University, the Joint Committee for Tutorial Classes, the W.E.A., the Y.M.C.A., the National Council of Music, and others. The secretaries are Mr. John Davies and Mr W. J. Pate. Two tutor organisers who have been set actively to work are already finding how great are the possibilities. They will only be realised by sustained co-opera- tive effort, but if this and the necessary funds are forthcoming the response is not in doubt. THE Preparatory Commission on Disarm- ament has had seven sessions. And now, at long last, an anxious world begins to hope. Mr. Hugh Gibson's important speech at Geneva last week looks like being the most valu- able contribution to a solution of the problem of disarmament which has yet been made. His pro- posals, if accepted in the right spirit, ought to mean that the technicians will no longer rule the roost as completely as they have done, and the first objective will become a general reduction of NUMBER V