Postcards from a Peace Mission: #OnThisDay 100 years ago – “Gwilym’s Diary” from the 1925 Welsh Churches Peace Appeal to America

#OnThisDay #OTD 100 years ago – Wed 25 Nov 1925 – a transatlantic liner called the ‘SS George Washington’ set sail from Southampton carrying a remarkable Peace Appeal from the Churches of Wales to America, conveyed by visionary Welsh peacebuilder the Rev Gwilym Davies.

View / Download Gwilym’s Diary

Over the next 6 weeks from November 25th 2025 to January 7th 2026, marking #ChurchesPeaceAppeal100, @WCIA_Wales and @Cytun will be following #GwilymsDiary in real time: “what he might have tweeted” as his American Peace mission unfolded.

The SS George Washington set sail from Southampton Docks on 25th November 1925, bound for New York, carrying Rev Gwilym Davies and the Welsh Churches Peace Appeal. Source: Wikiwand

Gwilym Davies’ conveyed the Welsh Churches Peace Appeal personally from Cardiff to Detroit, Michigan in December 1925, to presented the memorial at the US Congress of the ‘Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America‘. He kept a diary of his trip, and on return wrote up “A Welsh Approach to the Churches of America,” recounting the experiences of his voyage – which we wil be ‘bringing to life’ over coming weeks.

View Gwilym Davies’ Account of 1925 America

The churches memorial was formally presented in Detroit over 9-11 Dec 1925, to the Annual Congress of Churches in America; to mark this centenary, we will be hosting an online talk on Thur 11 Dec 2025. More info & tickets available via Eventbrite at:

Dec 11 – Detroit Centenary Lecture (online)

An exhibition exploring the remarkable story of this 1920s peace campaign, with the original memorial appeal as its centrepiece, is available for loan to Welsh community and heritage groups over the year ahead, having been launched and hosted by @StDavidsCathedral over Oct-Dec 2025.

View ‘Faith for a Warless World’

Find out more here about hosting the exhibition “Faith in a Warless World”.