MORNING SERIAL
MY TRUE friends have often chided me for this, even accusing me of abandoning the national sentiments of my youth and the later imperial dimensions of the Liberal cause. Yet, granting myself the benefit of hindsight, not so I would argue. My politics was always an expression of intellect – mine own largely – and a calculator of need – that of my fellow humans. Early on my admiration for Mr Gladstone caused me to support his concept of Home Rule all round, but I did not, and do not, envision this as any kind of nationalist separation, either as an agenda or an arrangement beyond the administrative. Yet, that I am as Welsh as any cannot be gainsaid. Why, often have I addressed my supporters in Aberdare and in Merthyr in Welsh, the language I spoke habitually as a boy, and at home when my father was absent. Mother was easier with that, and with me, and I was known to my playfellows on the mountainside as Dai. The first 10 years I believe should see no force-fed education. For my part I was sent away at just past 10 years of age. Inevitably it changed the essence of me. Mind you, I never embraced any narrow Little Englander views of the world either, albeit one wrapped in the fancy dress of Britain and its Empire. My sense of the political is that of rights and of responsibility, not of privilege and overlordship. Autonomy of the individual and prosperity for the commonwealth. Again, the trick is the means to the outcome for such a desired combination. I take my wealth to be a responsibility. I see my Wales as a stepping stone into a better future.
DA on an America Future
YOU well know, since you have accompanied me on my trips across the pond since the year before this asinine war occurred, that I see America as both a haven and an opportunity. So much so that I have been inclined to raise the hackles of some by claiming that I wish I had been born an American. Perhaps I was, eh? I mean it to mean as one born to make use of opportunity at an opportune time. Or, put another way, mayhap I will be one yet when this war is ended.
CONTINUES TOMORROW