TRANSLATION NEEDED

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 138, 14 June 1933, Page 20

TRANSLATION NEEDED

WELSH LITERATURE

Describing himself as "a inonoglot Englishman," Mr. Stanley Baldwin made an eloquent appeal to Welshmen to translate their best literature into English when he spoke at the dinner of the Honourable Society of Cynimrodorion, in London, reports the "Daily Telegraph." It was, to the English mind, astonishiug that so small a population as tho Welsh should have preserved their own tongue as a living language- for so long a time, he said. "You have enriched yourselves by your spoils from other countries; you are debtors to the Greeks and the' Romans,, the Jew and the Gentile. I suggest'that the time has come when you might begin to pay back that-debt and turn into English examples of the best Welsh literature, and especially contemporary literature,- of which we know very little, for the benefit of your neighbours. . . . . "Do not hoard your treasures —share them, not only with the band, of brothers, but with the stranger at the gate, of whom I am the chief. (Laughter.) There is a lot of good stuff waiting to come across the border. Why cannot we have it? "Most of you have read your Omar. I wonder how many of you remember that Fitzgerald could not find a publisher for it, and when about fifty copies of it we're-; put on the market Swinburne- bought one for twopence. For years they could not find out who was the translator. Yet today it can bo bought in every kind of binding,,and is on every girl's dressing table. (Laughter.) . "I see.that our old friend, Mr. Lloyd George, is about to publish a book. I understand that it will be about the Great War or the small peace. (Laughter.) I was thinking that, after all, the history of that time will be written after we are all dead, and posterity will judge of the high place that he occupies, in it and the low place that I occupy. . ■ •' Mr. Lloyd George has a remarkable gift of speech. When he has published his book why should he not translate for us some of the Welsh sermons for the benefit of English preachers? I told him that I was coining to speak on this subject; He is not here, but if he were I should say. exactly the same thine. .■■'!•• "I wonder if it would be an impertinence by me if I suggested, or would it be absurd to. inquire, that there may be some Welshman living in London who would finance the publication of classics in Welsh and English—Welsh on one side and English on the other. There are other ways of achieving immortality than by making staggering contributions to death duties. / "Surely it would be no small thing that in England there should be a realisation of what the spiritual Toots and the spiritual sustenance are of a people who have not only lived side by- side with us through so many centuries, but who have lived in this island incalculably longer years than has branch of that composite, race which calls itself the English."