The following article is taken from the marvellous website
http://www.treharrisdistrict.co.uk, and is transcribed here with the kind permission of the webmaster, Paul Corkrey.
Gwilym Davies CBE was a Welsh Baptist minister, who spent much of his life attempting to enhance international relations through supporting the work of the League of Nations and its successor, the United Nations. He also established the Annual World Wireless Message to Children in 1922, and was the first person to broadcast in Welsh, on St David’s Day, 1923. He was born in 29 Commercial Street, Cwmfelin, Bedlinog on 24 March 1879, son of D. J. Davies, a local Baptist minister.
He was a pupil teacher at Bedlinog when his father moved to the neighbourhood of Llangadog and he became a pupil at Llandeilo grammar school. He began preaching as early as 1895 and trained for the ministry at the Midland Baptist College, Nottingham, and at Rawdon College. There he won the Pegg Scholarship which enabled him to enter Jesus College, Oxford, where he graduated. Whilst at Oxford he edited The Baptist Outlook. In 1906 he was ordained minister at Broadhaven, Pembrokeshire, and the same year he married Annie Margaretta Davies, but she died 3 December 1906 and their baby son died four months later; they were buried in Cwmifor cemetery, Maenordeilo, Carmarthenshire.
In 1922 he retired from the ministry to devote himself to the cause of international peace. He joined with Lord David Davies in creating the Welsh council of the League of Nations Union with its headquarters at Aberystwyth. He was appointed a C.B.E. in 1948, and the University of Wales conferred an honorary degree of LL.D. upon him in 1954.
He suffered from ill-health ever since his student days. He spent much of his life in Cardiff and Geneva, and his work took him to all parts of the world. On 24 January 1942 he married Mary Elizabeth Ellis, Dolgellau (the second woman to be appointed an inspector of schools in Wales; she was granted permission to marry and to retain her post till 1943). They lived in 8 Marine Terrace, Aberystwyth. He died 29 January 1955 and his ashes were scattered at Lavernock Point, Penarth, where the first radio messages had been exchanged across water.
