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).