24 DECEMBER 1910, Page 16

WELSHMEN AND BUDGETS.

[To THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR."]

SIR,—Having been a diligent reader of your paper for many many years, I was astonished to find your columns on Decem- ber 3rd open to the bald and abusive contribution of your correspondent Dr. Rouse, of Perse School House, Cambridge. I ask, Sir, what sane purpose can possibly be served by thus wantonly insulting a whole people; for I write not to defend Mr. Lloyd George and his controversial methods,—he, I know, can well take care of himself. It would appear as if Dr. Rouse, from his prejudice and bigotry, bad confined his reading entirely to Andrew Borde and his obscure con- temporaries. Well, Sir, let Dr. Rouse note that gallant little Wales, I am glad to say, again worthily assumes her proud position in the van of all the forces of progress, and nobly reminds the denser-minded—if stronger-sinewed—Saxons that the inborn love of freedom that hurled all their power back from our bills for seven hundred years is as living and as strong as ever; and this should persuade even Dr. Rouse that a Welshman can " labour and delve and dig " on behalf of what he deems a righteous cause. Indeed, it needs no prophetic eye to see signs many which show that the future of our great Empire belongs to the Celt : not to what they foolishly call the domination of Redmond and his dollars, but the force of united Celtia governing by reason of its greater and brighter intellect over the duller and denser and less imaginative mind of Saxondom. Why, even in the past, to go back to Andrew Borde and his period, it was only this learning of the older races that enabled England to emerge from her once stagnant and obscure state to her position of greatness among the nations of the world; for it was the Welsh house of Tudor that was the greatest single factor in that grand uprising of England ; and later still, when her

destinies were all but wrecked by the feeble and nerveless Stuarts, nothing but the genius of Milton and Cromwell —both nearly full-blooded Welshmen—saved her from utter extinction and ruin. Yet, Sir, shame on them, say I, there are some men to-day, who from their positions ought to be above such puny methods, who have the impudence, assiduously aided by fitting descendants of pedlar Jews, to point the finger of scorn at Mr. Lloyd George and any one else who is not an " Englishman" ! Why I confess, in my laudable indignation, I should like to kick the whole nasty crew of the latter back into the Continental dens they originally crawled from : the chiefest service they have done England is to corrupt her Press to a deplorable extent with their spurious Imperialism ! Well, perhaps the purpose of their existence is at last revealed, for, faith, may they not furnish Dr. Rouse of Cambridge with a galaxy of congenial friends I—I am, Sir, &c., DOUGLAS LEWIS. Stoke-under-Ham, Somerset.

LWe are no Anti-Semites, and detest the unjust and insulting language in which our correspondent writes. We publish his letter to show how untrue is the allegation that we do not publish letters with which we disagree.—ED. Spectator.]