Page:Speeches and addresses by the late Thomas E Ellis M P.pdf/153

 So much for securing order and form and symmetry in the system of higher and secondary education. My wish is to find out what part we, as a Guild of Graduates, can and ought to take in this work? What special work should be ours as a Guild? I cannot help thinking when I see the University ordering the work of higher education, when I look forward to the Central Board ordering the work of the secondary schools, that our duty as a Guild is to bring something like order into the public presentation, so to speak, of the literature and records of Wales. It has been our misfortune in the past to have had practically no great public institution responsible to the whole of the Welsh people. We have had no great municipal or national institution responsible to the people, and we have lacked what most countries had, a capital, where proper depositaries of the literature and records of the people are maintained and honoured. The result is that all the expressions of the life and mind and past of Wales have been at the mercy and subject not only to the ravages of time but also the whims of chance.