Sia,—Mr. Lang appears to an extent to ha. e misinterpreted
the recommendations of the Central Advisory Committee for Education in Wales, but nevertheless he voices a very real fear of English-speaking Welshmen and Englishmen domiciled in Wales that their children may be subjected to the desperate tyrannies of an unrealistic minority who have visions of a completely Welsh-speaking Wales.
Welsh, even to a non-Welshman like myself, is a beautiful language to listen to, and I for one will be sorry to see it die, yet die it must. It is being swept away, not as Mr. Hughes Lewis claims by education, but by economic progress, increased travel facilities, and, not least, by the fact that the English language is not merely more useful, but more worthwhile. I admit ignorance of Welsh literature, but has it a Shakespeare, an Austen, a Keats, a Henry James or a modern poet of the calibre of Dylan Thomas ? Has the Welsh language today a playwright of even Emlyn Williams's talent ?
Mr. Hughes Lewis asserts that only ten per cent. of Mr. Lang's pupils find " any con- ceivable use in after life" for their French, German, Russian, Latin and Greek. This assertion, unhappily, may well be true. Yet all these languages have great literatures. Latin and Greek provide magnificent intel- lectual training. Russian is much in demand by the armed forces and of value to a boy during his period of conscription. German is an essential for advanced scientific educa- tion, whilst French, the most valuable of all,
opens vast new fields of travel and literature to its students. Mr. Hughes Lewis finds Welsh of more value than these. I admit, Welsh is quite often heard spoken in Wales, and if one is given to gossip it is a doubtless excellent medium for that pernicious form of activity. It is to this level that Welsh has degenerated,'
despite attempts to save it. In less than one hundred years, maybe in less than fifty,
Welsh, as an everyday form of communica- tion, will be extinct. It travels the same road
Hertford College, Oxford
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