Rhys Davies has never gained the appreciation in this country that he receives in England. It is likely that his work is accepted there for its accurate portrayal of life among the Welsh coal miners, while to us, less immediately concerned with the factual material, the conflicting and disruptive forces at work in Mr. Davies's mind are more apparent. For there is a deep inner cleavage in his loyalties and interests. Intellectually, he is ruled by an alert social consciousness; he is a radical who cannot for long forget the economic cancers that trouble his land. But emotionally he is more than a little moved by the spirit of fantasy that courses through his Celtic veins: he can go only so long without acknowledging, either gayly or pathetically, his contempt for material circumstance. And he falls just short of the genius needed to synthesize these two conflicting elements in his personality.

It is this cleavage that weakens "A Time to Laugh" to its very underpinnings, for it never becomes clearly either a strike novel or the story of a man's quest for satisfying human relationships, but vacillates uncertainly between the two. When Mr. Davies runs into the great unresolved dilemma of all strike novelists—the improbable utopianism of complete victory and the unacceptable pessimism of complete defeat—he shifts the emphasis to the human story. And when the human story threatens triteness he gives the reader a shot of violent realism. His confusion is indicated by his choice of a central character, Tudor Morris, a young physician who breaks with his conservative, old-style humanitarian family and with his snobbish, narrow-minded fiancée in order to work for and with the miners….

This might have made a good enough story, for it dramatizes the transition from the old Welsh ways to the new, and the author's undisputed talent succeeds in producing characters that ring true…. But Mr. Davies's social consciousness prods him into discontent with this sort of material. He cuts each situation short in order to return to his factual chronicle of Welsh labor relations in 1899. We are taken through two great strikes, both of which end inconclusively. We learn a great deal about starvation and about tactical details but very little regarding possible solutions to the problem.

Mr. Davies must have known his story falls apart, for in a desperate attempt to unite the two halves he makes Tudor blossom suddenly and incredibly as a strike leader. It is true that Tudor demonstrates to the skeptical miners his devotion to their cause by taking the raps of police truncheons on his skull. But these raps would hardly serve to endow him with the knowledge and experience necessary to direct the complicated tactics of a great strike. All Mr. Davies's warm humor and tenderness, plus his knowledge of Welsh life, cannot conceal the disruptive forces that tear this novel apart.