University of Wales

honours nine men

 

 

A CONGREGATION of the University of Wales was held in the Readers Room of the National Library at Aberystwyth

yesterday for the purpose of admitting nine graduands to honorary degrees.

 

 

Distinguished men upon whom the University of Wales conferred honorary degrees photographed on the steps of the National Library₁ Aberystwyth after the ceremony yesterday. They Include Mr. David Owen Roberts, the French Ambassador(M. Rene Massigli), Mr. J. L. C Cecil - Williams, Sir WillIam Llewelyn Davies, Major Edgar Jones, Air Chief-marshal Sir Hugh Pughe-Jones, Sir David Brunt, Mr. LLewelyn Wyn Griffith, and the Rev. Tecwyr Evans. Also in this photograph are Principal Ifor L. Evans (Vice-Chancellor), Lord Harlech (Pro­-Chancellor), and Sir Frederick Roes, Warden of the Guild of Graduates.

 

 

In pursuance of a resolution of the Court passed at its meeting on July 16, 1951 (vide Minutes, July 16, 1951, p. 5,

Actum 5), Mr. Edgar Jones, O.B.E., was admitted to the degree of Doctor in Legibus, honoris causa.

 

Professor David Williams, M.A., introduced the graduand in the following terms :----

 

Mr. Vice-Chancellor,

It gives me great pleasure to present Mr. Edgar Jones to you for the award of the degree of Doctor in Legibus, honoris causa. Mr. Edgar Jones entered the University College of Wales, Aber­ystwyth, sixty-six years ago, in 1885. By 1901 his prominence in the affairs of his college had already been recognised by his election as president of its Old Students’ Association; this year, half a century later, he again holds the same office. Seldom can a college in any university have received from one man, over so long a period, such continuous and devoted loyalty.

 

Mr. Edgar Jones’s supreme achievement is the service which he rendered, for thirty-nine years, as headmaster first at Llandeilo and then at Barry, and in awarding him this doctorate the University is honouring one of the great headmasters of our nation. For his pioneer work in education is perhaps fully appreciated only by those who came into personal contact with it. Whole decades before the term “multilateral school” became the common property which it is to-day, such a school was already in existence in Barry, providing instruction for its pupils in a whole range of subjects according to their aptitudes. The time-table, in conse­quence, was a work of art which inspectors of schools travelled far to see. Nor was the headmaster’s interest confined to the academic content of these subjects, for he managed to convey some of his own enthusiasm for art, literature, and music to the thousands of pupils who passed through his school.

 

But Mr. Edgar Jones’s service to the nation was not confined within the four walls of his school. He has served on more committees than he can probably now remember, including the councils of the University, of the Cardiff and Aberystwyth Colleges, and of the National Museum. They have all benefited by his wisdom and moderation, for in them all his role has been that of pacifier, of a smoother-out of difficulties. He has, in his time, poured oil on much troubled water. And this but reflects the urbanity which he has preserved alike through the national emer­gency of war and through bitter personal tragedy, that urbanity which is the fine flowering of the academic mind. In him the University honours one of its most loyal members and of its noblest characters.

 

 

Professor David Williams then presented the graduand in the following terms :—

       Anrhydeddus Is-Ganghellor, cyfiwynaf i ti Edgar Jones, y dyfarnwyd iddo radd Doethur yn y Cyfreithiau er anrhydedd.