Of this the chiefest is his books, and as the Society as such had no part in them, anything more than a reference to them is outside the scope of this volume.  But it must be said that his “New Worlds for Old,” published in 1908, whilst he was a member of the Fabian Executive, is perhaps the best recent book on English Socialism.

In this connection Mr. Wells displayed unexpected modesty and at the same time inexperience of the ways of the world.  His first criticism of the Society, his first project of reform, related to our tracts.  To this point he directed an unpublished preface to his paper “This Misery of Boots,” when he read it to the Society before the controversy had actually started.  He justly observed that very few of our publications were addressed to the unconverted, were emotional appeals to join our movement, or effective explanations of our general principles.  He said that these ought to be written, and the odd thing is that he appeared to imagine that anybody, or at any rate a considerable number of people, could just sit down and write them.  He was aware that he could do it himself, and he innocently imagined that plenty of other people could do it too.  He blamed the Executive for failing to make use of the members in this respect, and persuaded them to invite any member to send in manuscripts.

In fact of course something like genius, or, at any rate, very rare ability, is required for this sort of work.  Any competent writer can collect the facts about Municipal Drink Trade, or Afforestation, or Poor Law Reform:  many can explain an Act of Parliament in simple language:  but only one here and there can write what others care to read on the principles of Socialism and the broad aspects of its propaganda.  If our list of tracts be examined it will be found that the great majority of the “general” tracts have been written by Sidney Webb and Bernard Shaw.  A few other writers have contributed general tracts from a special standpoint, such as those on Christian Socialism.  When we have mentioned reprinted papers by William Morris and Sir Oliver Lodge, and a tract by Sidney Ball, the list is virtually complete.  Mr. Wells himself only contributed to us his paper “This Misery of Boots,” and his appeal to the rank and file yielded nothing at all.  Of course there are plenty of people as innocent in this respect as Mr. Wells was at that period referred to.  Hardly a month has passed in the last twenty years without somebody, usually from the remote provinces, sending up a paper on Socialism, which he is willing to allow the Society to publish on reasonable terms.  But only once have we thus found an unknown author whose work, on a special subject, we could publish, and he resigned a year or two later because we were compelled to reject a second tract which he wrote for us.

The history of the intervention of Mr. Wells is now complete.  Some account of the expansion of the Society at this period will be given in the next chapter.