The Society has an old-established tradition and a settled policy, but in fact it is not now controlled by anything like an Old Gang.  The Executive Committee numbers twenty-one:  two only of these, Sidney Webb and myself, have sat upon it from its early days:  only two others, Dr. Lawson Dodd (the Treasurer) and W. Stephen Sanders (the General Secretary) were on the Executive during the great contest with Mr. Wells ten years ago.  All the rest have joined it within the last few years, and if they support the old tradition, it is because they accept it, and not because they created it.  Moreover the majority of the members are young people, most of them born since the Society was founded.  The Society is old, but it does not consist, in the main, of old people.

What its future may be I shall consider in the next, and concluding, chapter.

* * * * *

I must add a final paragraph to my history.  At the time I write, in the first days of 1916, the war is with us and the end is not in sight.  In accordance with the rule which forbids it to speak, unless it has something of value to say, the Society has made no pronouncement and adopted no policy.  A resolution registering the opinion of the majority of a few hundred members assembled in a hall is not worth recording when the subject is one in which millions are as concerned and virtually as competent as themselves.

Naturally there is diversity of opinion amongst the members.  On the one hand Mr. Clifford Allen, a member of the Executive, has played a leading part in organising opposition to conscription and opposing the policy of the Government.  On the other hand two other members of the Executive Committee, Mr. H.J.  Gillespie and Mr. C.M.  Lloyd, have, since the beginning of the war, resigned their seats in order to take commissions in the Army.  Another member, the General Secretary, after months of vigorous service as one of the Labour Party delegates to Lord Derby’s Recruiting Committee, accepted a commission in the Army in November, 1915, in order to devote his whole time to this work, and has been granted leave of absence for the period of the war, whilst I have undertaken my old work in his place.  Many members of the Society joined the Army in the early months of the war, and already a number, amongst whom may be named Rupert Brooke, have given their lives for their country.

[Illustration:  EDWARD R. PEASE, IN 1913]

FOOTNOTES: 

[40] The editors of the Oxford English Dictionary kindly inform me that the earliest quotation they have yet found is dated December, 1894.  I cannot discover it in any Fabian publication before Tract No. 65, which was published in July, 1895.

[41] Manifesto on Fabian Policy issued by the Fabian Reform Committee, 4 pp., 4to, November 28th, 1911.

[42] “Fabian News,” November, 1912.

Chapter XII