"Fabianism and the Empire": 1900-1
The Library and Book Boxes--Parish Councils--The Workmen's
Compensation Act--The Hutchinson Trust--The London School of
Economics--Educational Lectures--Electoral Policy--The controversy
over the South African War--The publication of "Fabianism and the
Empire."
The next few years were devoted to quieter work than that of the period
described in the previous chapter. The Conservative Party was in power,
Liberalism, which had lost its great leader, and a year or two later
lost also his successor, Lord Rosebery, was in so hopeless a minority
that its return to power in the near future seemed to be and was
impossible. It had been easy to permeate the Liberals, because most of
our members were or had been connected with their party. It was
impossible to permeate Conservatism on similar lines, both because we
were not in touch with their organisation and because Conservatives in
general regarded our proposals with complete aversion. It was a time,
therefore, for educational rather than political activity, and to this
the Society devoted the greater part of its energies. Its work in this
field took various forms, some of which may be briefly described.
[Illustration: _From a photograph by Emery Walker_
G. BERNARD SHAW, IN 1889]
* * * * *
We had started a lending library in boxes for our local societies, and
as these died away we offered the use of it to working-class
organisations, and indeed to any organisation of readers or students.
Books were purchased from special funds, a collection of some 5000
volumes was ultimately formed, and for the last twenty years the Society
has kept in circulation anything up to 200 boxes of books on Socialism,
economics, history and social problems, which are lent for ten shillings
a year to Co-operative Societies, Trade Unions, Socialist Societies, and
miscellaneous organisations. The books are intended to be educational
rather than directly propagandist, and each box is made up to suit the
taste, expressed or inferred, of the subscriber. Quarterly exchanges are
allowed, but the twenty or thirty books in a box usually last a society
for a year. It is a remarkable fact that although boxes are lent freely
to such slight organisations as reading classes, and are sent even to
remote mining villages in Wales or Scotland, not a single box has ever
been lost. Delays are frequent: books of course are often missing, but
sooner or later every box sent out has been returned to the Society.
Another method of securing the circulation of good books on social
subjects has been frequently used. We prepare a list of recent and
important publications treating of social problems and request each
member to report how many of them are in the Public Library of his
district, and further to apply for the purchase of such as are absent.
* * * * *
The Local Government Act of 1894, commonly called the Parish Councils
Act, which constituted out of chaos a system of local government for
rural England, gave the Society an opportunity for practising that part
of its policy which includes the making the best use of all forms of
existing legislation. Mr. Herbert Samuel was at that time a friend,
though he was never a member, of the Society, and the first step in his
successful political career was his candidature for the typically rural
Southern Division of Oxfordshire. He was good enough to prepare for us
not only an admirable explanation of the Act, but also Questions for
Parish Councillors, for Rural District Councillors, and for Urban
District Councillors. Probably this was the first time that an analysis
of a new Act of Parliament had been published at a penny. Anyway the
demand for it was considerable, and over 30,000 copies were sold in five
months. Then it was revised, with the omission of temporary matter, and
republished as "Parish and District Councils: What they are and what
they can do," and in this form has gone through many editions, and is
still in print. The tract states that the secretary of the Society will
give advice on any obscure point in the law, and in this way the Society
has become an Information Bureau; hardly a week passed for many years
after the autumn of 1895 without a letter from some village or small
town asking questions as to housing, common rights, charities, the
duties of chairmen of councils, the qualifications of candidates, and so
on.
Similar tracts were published describing the powers and duties of the
London County Council, the London Vestries, and the Metropolitan Borough
Councils, established in 1899, while one giving the powers of various
local authorities for housing (No. 76, "Houses for the People") has gone
through many editions and still has a steady sale.
* * * * *
The Workmen's Compensation Act, 1897, afforded another opportunity for
this sort of work. Our penny tract (No. 82) describing the rights of the
workmen under the Act was reprinted thirteen times in eight months, and
over 120,000 were sold in the first year of publication. This tract
offered free advice to every purchaser, and the result has been an
enormous amount of correspondence which during seventeen years has never
entirely ceased. This work of providing expert advice on minor legal
matters has been a quiet service to the community constantly rendered by
the Society. The barristers amongst our members have freely given
assistance in the more difficult matters. Occasionally the solicitors
amongst us have taken up cases where the plaintiff was specially
helpless.
* * * * *
In 1894, Henry Hutchinson, who had provided the funds for much of our
country lecturing, died, and to our complete surprise it was found that
he had appointed Sidney Webb, whom he hardly knew personally, his
executor, and had left the residue of his estate, between £9000 and
£10,000, to five trustees--Sidney Webb, his daughter, myself, William
Clarke, and W.S. De Mattos--with directions that the whole sum be
expended within ten years. The two last named took but little part in
administering the trust, and Miss Hutchinson died only fifteen months
later, also leaving to her colleagues the residue of her estate,
something under £1000, for similar purposes. The trustees--Mrs. Bernard
Shaw, Hubert Bland, and Frederick Whelen were appointed at later
dates--resolved that the money in their charge should be used
exclusively for special work, as otherwise the effect would be merely to
relieve the members of their obligation to pay for the maintenance of
their Society. They decided to devote part of the funds to initiating
the London School of Economics and Political Science, because they
considered that a thorough knowledge of these sciences was a necessity
for people concerned in social reconstruction, if that reconstruction
was to be carried out with prudence and wisdom: and in particular it was
essential that all classes of public officials should have the
opportunity of learning whatever can be known of economics and politics
taught on modern lines. Our old Universities provided lectures on
political science as it was understood by Plato and Aristotle, by Hobbes
and Bentham: they did not then--and indeed they do not now--teach how
New Zealand deals with strikes, how America legislates about trusts, how
municipalities all over the world organise tramways.
The trustees, as I have said, originated the London School of Economics,
but from the first they associated others with themselves in its
management, and they made no attempt to retain any special share in its
control. Their object was to get taught the best science that could be
obtained, confident that if their own political theories were right,
science would confirm them, and if they were wrong, it was better that
they should be discredited. The London School of Economics, though thus
founded, has never had any direct or organic connection with the Fabian
Society, and therefore any further account of its successful career
would be out of place in this volume. But it may be said that it has
certainly more than justified the hopes of its founders, or rather, to
be accurate, I should say, founder, since the other trustees were wholly
guided by the initiative of Sidney Webb.
Besides the School, and the Library connected with it, the Trust
promoted for many years regular courses of Fabian educational lectures
on social and political subjects, such as Socialism, Trade Unionism,
Co-operation, Poor Law, Economics, and Economic History. Lecturers were
selected with care, and were in some cases given a maintenance allowance
during the preparation of their lectures. Then arrangements were made
for courses of four lectures each, on what may be called University
Extension lines, in four or five centres in one part of the country. For
example, in the year 1896-7 180 lectures were given in fifty towns, half
of them under the auspices of branches of the I.L.P., and the rest
organised by Co-operative Societies, Liberal Associations, Trade Unions,
and other bodies. Very careful syllabuses were prepared and widely
circulated, and the whole scheme was intended to be educational rather
than directly propagandist. The first lecturers engaged were J. Ramsay
Macdonald and Miss Enid Stacy, whose premature death, a few years after
her marriage to the Rev. Percy Widdrington, was a great loss to the
movement. This lecturing was maintained for many years. In 1900, shortly
after the creation there of County and District Councils, we
experimented upon Ireland, where J. Bruce Glasier and S.D. Shallard gave
a number of courses of lectures, without any very obvious results. In
1902 W. Stephen Sanders took over the work, but the fund was coming to
an end, and after 1904 subsidised lecturing virtually ceased.
* * * * *
In order to help working-class students who had the desire to study more
continuously than by attendance at lectures, correspondence classes were
started in the same class of subject as the lectures. A textbook was
selected and divided into sections, to each of which an introduction was
written, concluding with questions. Written answers were sent in and
corrected by the conductor of the class. This went on regularly until
1900, when Ruskin College, Oxford, organised similar classes on a larger
scale, and our services were no longer required.
* * * * *
In August, 1896, the triennial International Socialist Workers and Trade
Union Congress was held in London, at which the Society was represented
by a numerous delegation. The chief business proved to be the expulsion
of the Anarchists, who at this period attended these conferences and had
to be got rid of before the appointed business could be carried on. The
Society prepared an important "Report" for circulation at the Congress,
one part of it advocating various reforms, no longer of any special
interest, and the other part consisting of a summary of the principles
and policy of the Society, drafted by Bernard Shaw in a series of
epigrammatic paragraphs. This document, still circulated as Tract 70, is
interesting both as a brief and vivid exposition of Fabianism and
because it gave rise to another of the long series of fights on the
policy of political toleration. The passage chiefly objected to,
written, of course, for foreigners, and therefore more detailed than
otherwise would be necessary, is as follows:--
"FABIAN ELECTORAL TACTICS.
"The Fabian Society does not claim to be the people of England, or
even the Socialist party, and therefore does not seek direct
political representation by putting forward Fabian candidates at
elections. But it loses no opportunity of influencing elections, and
inducing constituencies to select Socialists as their candidates. No
person, however, can obtain the support of the Fabian Society or
escape its opposition, merely by calling himself a Socialist or
Social-Democrat. As there is no Second Ballot in England, frivolous
candidatures give great offence and discredit the party in whose name
they are undertaken, because any third candidate who is not well
supported will not only be beaten himself but may also involve in his
defeat the better of the two candidates competing with him. Under
such circumstances the Fabian Society throws its weight against the
third candidate, whether he calls himself a Socialist or not, in
order to secure the victory to the better of the two candidates
between whom the contest really lies. But when the third candidate is
not only a serious representative of Socialism, but can organise his
party well and is likely to poll sufficient votes to make even his
defeat a respectable demonstration of the strength and growth of
Socialism in the constituency, the Fabian Society supports him
resolutely under all circumstances and against all other parties."
This was an extreme statement of our position, because the Society has
never, so far as I am aware, taken any action which could be described
as "throwing its weight against" a third candidate in a parliamentary
election. But it represented our policy as it might have been, if
occasion had arisen to carry it to its logical conclusion.
It was opposed, not because it was an inaccurate statement of fact, but
because a minority of the Society desired to change the policy it
described; and after the Congress was over an influential requisition
was got up by J. Ramsay Macdonald, who had been elected to the Executive
Committee in 1894, demanding that the tract be withdrawn from
circulation. The battle was joined at Clifford's Inn in October, and the
insurgents were defeated, after an exciting discussion, by 108 to 33.
* * * * *
There is little to record of the years that followed. Graham Wallas, who
had been elected to the London School Board in 1894, resigned his seat
on the Executive in 1895; Bernard Shaw became a St. Pancras Vestryman
without a contest in 1897, an event rather of literary[30] than
political significance, and in 1898 he had a serious illness which kept
him out of the movement for nearly two years; whilst at the end of 1899
Sydney Olivier was appointed Colonial Secretary of Jamaica, and spent
most of the next fourteen years in the West Indies, latterly as Governor
of Jamaica, until 1913, when he was recalled to London to be the
Secretary of the Board of Agriculture.
* * * * *
External events put an end to this period of quiescence, and the
Society, which was often derisively regarded as expert in the politics
of the parish pump, an exponent of "gas and water Socialism," was forced
to consider its attitude towards the problems of Imperialism.
War was declared by President Kruger for the South African Republic on
October 11th, 1899. Up to this point the whole of the Society, with very
few exceptions, had scouted the idea of war. "The grievances alleged,
though some of them were real enough, were ludicrously unimportant in
comparison with our cognate home grievances. Nobody in his senses would
have contemplated a war on their account,"[31] But when war had come the
situation was entirely altered. The majority of the Society recognised
that the British Empire had to win the war, and that no other conclusion
to it was possible. Some of us had joined in the protest against the
threat of war: but when that protest was fruitless we declined to
contest the inevitable. A large section of the Liberal Party and nearly
all other Socialists took another view. They appeared to believe, and
some of them even hoped, that the Boers might be successful and the
British army be driven to the sea. The I.L.P. regarded the war as a
typical case of the then accepted theory of Socialism that war is always
instigated by capitalists for the purpose of obtaining profits. They
opposed every step in the prosecution of the campaign, and criticised
every action of the British authorities.
In this matter the left and right wings of the Fabians joined hands in
opposition to the centre. Members who came into the movement when
Marxism was supreme, like Walter Crane, those who worked largely with
the I.L.P., such as J. Ramsay Macdonald, S.G. Hobson, and G.N. Barnes
(later M.P. and Chairman of the Labour Party), were joined by others who
were then associated with the Liberals, such as Dr. F. Lawson Dodd, Will
Crooks (later Labour M.P.), Clement Edwards (later Liberal M.P.), and
Dr. John Clifford. On the other side were the older leaders of the
Society, who took the view that the members had come together for the
purpose of promoting Socialism, that the question at issue was one
"which Socialism cannot solve and does not touch,"[32] and that whilst
each member was entitled to hold and work for his own opinion, it was
not necessary for the Society in its corporate capacity to adopt a
formal policy with the result of excluding the large minority which
would have objected to whatever decision was arrived at.
The first round in the contest was at a business meeting on October
13th, 1899, when on the advice of the Executive the members present
rejected a motion of urgency for the discussion of a resolution
expressing sympathy with the Boers.
It was however agreed that the matter could not end thus, and a members'
meeting was fixed for December 8th, at Clifford's Inn Hall, when S.G.
Hobson moved a long resolution declaring it essential that the attitude
of the Society in regard to the war should be clearly asserted, and
concluding: "The Fabian Society therefore formally dissociates itself
from the Imperialism of Capitalism and vainglorious Nationalism and
pledges itself to support the expansion of the Empire only in so far as
it may be compatible with the expansion of that higher social
organisation which this Society was founded to promote."
Bernard Shaw, on behalf of the Executive Committee, moved a long
reasoned amendment declaring that a parliamentary vote was not worth
fighting about, demanding that at the conclusion of the war measures be
taken for securing the value of the Transvaal mines for the public, and
that the interests of the miners be safeguarded. The amendment was
barely relevant to the issue, and notwithstanding influential support it
was defeated by 58 to 27. Thereupon the "previous question" was moved
and carried by 59 to 50. This inconclusive result revealed a great
diversity of opinion in the Society, and the Executive Committee, for
the first and, so far, the only time, availed itself of the rule which
authorised it to submit any question to a postal referendum of all the
members.
The question submitted in February, 1900, was this: "Are you in favour
of an official pronouncement being made now by the Fabian Society on
Imperialism in relation to the War?" and on the paper published in the
"News" were printed four reasons on one side and five on the other,
drafted by those members of the Executive who advocated each policy. On
the one hand it was argued that the Society should resist aggressive
capitalism and militarism, thus putting itself into line with
international socialism, and that expenditure on the war would postpone
social reform. On the other it was contended that the question was
outside the province of the Society, that a resolution by the Society
would carry no weight, would not stop the war, and might have a serious
effect on the solidarity of the Society itself. The vote excited great
interest: an appeal to the electorate to vote Yes, worded with much
moderation, was issued by Walter Crane, S.G. Hobson, Charles
Charrington, F. Lawson Dodd, J. Frederick Green, George N. Barnes, Will
Crooks, Henry S. Salt, Dr. John Clifford, Mrs. Mallet, Clement Edwards,
Mrs. J.R. Macdonald and others; to which a reply was sent, signed only
by members of the Executive, Bernard Shaw, Sidney Webb, Hubert Bland,
J.F. Oakeshott, H.W. Macrosty and one or two others. Finally a rejoinder
by the signatories of the first circular was issued in the course of the
poll which extended over nearly a month. The membership at the time was
about 800, of whom 50 lived abroad, and in all only 476 votes were cast,
217 in favour of a pronouncement and 259 against.
It was said at the time, and has constantly been alleged since, that the
Society had voted its approval of the South African War and had
supported imperialist aggression and anti-democratic militarism. As will
be seen from the foregoing, no such statement is correct. A vote on the
policy of the Government would have given an overwhelming adverse
majority, but it would have destroyed the Society. In early days we had
drawn a clear line between Socialism and politics: we had put on one
side such problems as Home Rule and Church Disestablishment as of the
nature of red herrings, matters of no real importance in comparison with
the economic enfranchisement which we advocated. In the early eighties
Parliament spent futile and fruitless months discussing whether Mr.
Bradlaugh should take the oath, and whether an extension of the
franchise should or should not be accompanied by redistribution. We
wanted to make the working classes pay less attention to these party
questions and more attention to their own social conditions. We thought,
or at any rate said, that the Liberal and Conservative leaders kept the
party ball rolling in order to distract the workers from the iniquity of
the distribution of wealth. We insisted that Socialism was an economic
doctrine, and had nothing to do with other problems. Later on we
realised that the form of government is scarcely less important than its
content: that the unit of administration, whether imperial, national, or
local, is germane to the question of the services to be administered;
that if the governmental machine is to be used for industry, that
machine must be modern and efficient: and that in fact no clear line of
distinction can be drawn between the problems of constitutional
structure which concern Socialism and those, if any, which do not
concern it. In the case of the South African war it was mainly the
instinct of self-preservation that actuated us; it is certain that any
other decision would have destroyed the Society. The passions of that
period were extraordinarily bitter. The Pro-Boers were mobbed and howled
down, their actions were misrepresented, and their motives disparaged:
they retaliated by accusing the British troops of incredible atrocities,
by rejoicing over every disaster which befell our arms, and by
prophesying all sorts of calamities however the war ended. There was
never any question of the Society issuing a pronouncement justifying
the war. Only a very few of our members went as far as that. But many
others, all or nearly all who were now beginning to be called the "old
gang," on whom from first to last the initiative and stability of the
Society has depended, would have declined to be associated with what
they regarded as the anti-patriotic excesses of certain of the Liberals,
and would have resigned their membership, or at any rate their official
positions in the Society, had it adopted at that time the same policy as
the I.L.P. Happily tolerance prevailed, and although an attempt was made
to get up a big secession, only about fifteen members resigned in a
group when the result of the poll was declared. These, however, included
a few important names, J. Ramsay Macdonald and J. Frederick Green, of
the Executive Committee, George N. Barnes and Pete Curran, future Labour
Members of Parliament, Walter Crane, H.S. Salt, Mrs. J.R. Macdonald, and
Mrs. Pankhurst.
At the election of the Executive Committee in April, 1900, the Society
by another vote confirmed the previous decision. All the old members
were re-elected, and those of the majority party polled the heaviest
votes. The two seats vacated by resignation were filled by "Pro-Boers,"
and the only new candidate who supported the majority was defeated. It
was clear, therefore, that the voting was not strictly on party
lines--one of the opposition, Charles Charrington, was fourth on the
poll--but that the Society as a whole approved of the non-committal
policy. The Executive Committee had been elected since 1894 by a postal
ballot of the whole Society, and on this occasion 509 members, over 62
per cent of the whole, recorded their votes.
The Executive had resolved at the beginning of the war to issue a tract
on Imperialism, and at the Annual Meeting in May, 1900, a resolution
was passed that it prepare for submission to the members "a constructive
criticism from the Socialist standpoint of the actions and programmes of
the various political parties."
Needless to say, Bernard Shaw undertook the difficult job, for at this
period all the official pronouncements of the Executive were drafted by
him. At the beginning of September it was announced as nearly ready, and
later in the month a proof was sent to every member for criticism, and a
meeting was called for the 25th to discuss it. This was the extreme
example of the practice at that time habitual, of inviting the
co-operation of every member in our publications. No less than 134
members returned amended proofs or wrote letters of criticism; and it is
recorded that only one of these was opposed to the whole thing, whilst
only nine preferred to have no manifesto at all; and another nine
objected to material portions. The great majority were cordial in
approval.
Bernard Shaw is fond of posing as the most conceited of persons, but
those who have had to do with him in literary matters are aware that no
pose was ever more preposterous. When he has acted as the literary
expert of the Fabian Society he has considered every criticism with
unruffled courtesy, and dealt with the many fools who always find their
way into extreme parties, not according to their folly, but with the
careful consideration properly accorded to eminent wisdom. The business
of examining over a hundred marked proofs of a document of 20,000 words,
every line of which was more or less controversial, was an immense one,
but the author gave every criticism its proper weight, and accepted
every useful amendment. Then came the meeting. It was held at Clifford's
Inn, and between 130 and 140 members were present, each of whom was
entitled to move any amendment on any of the 20,000 words, or any
addition to or deletion of them. Nearly three hours were occupied partly
in discussing the controversial portion and partly with the general
question of publication. Only eighteen voted for omitting the part about
Imperialism, and the minority against the publication numbered no more
than fourteen. By this time the controversy over the war had reached an
intensity which those who cannot recollect it will find difficult to
believe, and nobody but the author could have written an effective
document on the war so skilfully as to satisfy the great majority of the
supporters of both parties in the Society. Bernard Shaw has accomplished
many difficult feats, but none of them, in my opinion, excels that of
drafting for the Society and carrying through the manifesto called
"Fabianism and the Empire."
It was published as a shilling volume by Grant Richards, and although it
was widely and favourably noticed in the Press the sales were only
moderate, just over 2000 copies to the end of the year. Some time later
the Society purchased the remainder of 1500 copies at 1d. and since sold
them at prices, rising as the stock declined, up to five shillings a
copy!
The theme of the manifesto is the overriding claim of efficiency not
only in our own government, and in our empire, but throughout the world.
The earth belongs to mankind, and the only valid moral right to national
as well as individual possession is that the occupier is making adequate
use of it for the benefit of the world community. "The problem before us
is how the world can be ordered by Great Powers of practically
international extent.... The partition of the greater part of the globe
among such powers is, as a matter of fact that must be faced approvingly
or deploringly, now only a question of time" (p. 3). "The notion that a
nation has a right to do what it pleases with its own territory, without
reference to the interests of the rest of the world is no more tenable
from the International Socialist point of view--that is, from the point
of view of the twentieth century--than the notion that a landlord has a
right to do what he likes with his estate without reference to the
interests of his neighbours.... [In China] we are asserting and
enforcing international rights of travel and trade. But the right to
trade is a very comprehensive one: it involves a right to insist on a
settled government which can keep the peace and enforce agreements. When
a native government of this order is impossible, the foreign trading
power must set one up" (pp. 44-5). "The value of a State to the world
lies in the quality of its civilisation, not in the magnitude of its
armaments.... There is therefore no question of the steam-rollering of
little States because they are little, any more than of their
maintenance in deference to romantic nationalism. The State which
obstructs international civilisation will have to go, be it big or
little. That which advances it should be defended by all the Western
Powers. Thus huge China and little Monaco may share the same fate,
little Switzerland and the vast United States the same fortune" (p. 46).
As for South Africa, "however ignorantly [our] politicians may argue
about it, reviling one another from the one side as brigands, and
defending themselves from the other with quibbles about waste-paper
treaties and childish slanders against a brave enemy, the fact remains
that a Great Power, consciously or unconsciously, must govern in the
interests of civilisation as a whole; and it is not to those interests
that such mighty forces as gold-fields, and the formidable armaments
that can be built upon them, should be wielded irresponsibly by small
communities of frontiersmen. Theoretically they should be
internationalised, not British-Imperialised; but until the Federation of
the World becomes an accomplished fact we must accept the most
responsible Imperial federations available as a substitute for it" (pp.
23-4).
As however the Manifesto was designed for the general election, this
theme was only sketched, and the greater part was occupied with matters
of a more immediately practicable character. The proposed partition of
China at that time seemed imminent, and our attention had been called to
the efficiency of the German State organisation of foreign trade in
comparison with the _laissez-faire_ policy which dominated our Foreign
Office. We regarded our overseas trade as a national asset, and urged
that the consular service should be revolutionised. "Any person who
thinks this application of Socialism to foreign trade through the
consular system impossible also thinks the survival of his country in
the age of the Powers impossible. No German thinks it impossible. If he
has not already achieved it, he intends to" (pp. 10, 11). We must "have
in every foreign market an organ of commercially disinterested
industrial intelligence. A developed consulate would be such an organ."
"The consulate could itself act as broker, if necessary, and have a
revenue from commissions, of which, however, the salaries of its
officials should be strictly independent" (pp. 10 and 8).
The present army should be replaced "by giving to the whole male
population an effective training in the use of arms without removing
them from civil life. This can be done without conscription or barrack
life" by extending the half-time system to the age of 21 and training
the young men in the other half. From the millions of men thus trained
"we could obtain by voluntary enlistment a picked professional force of
engineers, artillery, and cavalry, and as large a garrison for outlying
provinces as we chose to pay for, if we made it attractive by the
following reforms": full civil rights, a living wage, adequate
superannuation after long service, and salaries for officers on the
civil scale. The other reforms advocated included a minimum wage for
labour, grants in aid for housing, freedom for municipal trading,
municipal public-houses, and reorganisation of the machinery of
education, as explained later. "The moral of it all is that what the
British Empire wants most urgently in its government is not
Conservatism, not Liberalism, not Imperialism, but brains and political
science" (p. 93).
[Illustration: GRAHAM WALLAS, IN 1891]
FOOTNOTES:
[30] Shaw has "vehemently protested" against this phrase, saying that he
"put in six years of hard committee work to the astonishment of the
vestrymen who had not expected (him) to be a man of business and a
sticker at it." But I am still of opinion that the secondary effects of
those six years on his knowledge of affairs and the lessons he has drawn
from them in his writings and speeches have been of greater value to his
innumerable readers and hearers than was his administrative diligence to
the Parish of St. Pancras.
[31] "Fabianism and the Empire," p. 26.
[32] "The Fabian Society and the War: reply by the majority of the
Executive Committee to the recent circular." (Circular on the referendum
mentioned later.)