The Committee thus appointed consisted of the Rev. Stewart Headlam, Mrs. Bernard Shaw, and G.R.S.  Taylor of the Executive; Dr. Stanton Coit, W.A.  Colegate, Dr. Haden Guest, Sydney Olivier, Mrs. Pember Reeves, H.G.  Wells, and Mrs. Wells.

The Committee held its first sitting on February 28th, but its report was not completed and presented to the Executive until the following October, Mr. Wells having in the interval visited the United States.

“Faults of the Fabian,” written before the election of 1906, gave little indication that its author anticipated the sudden outburst of interest in Socialism which followed the astonishing success of the Labour Party at the polls.  When Keir Hardie was chosen as leader of the party, it was recognised that Socialism was no longer the creed of a few fanatics, but a political force supported, actively or passively, by the great organisations of Labour throughout the country, able to fight, and sometimes to beat both the older parties.  A new era in politics had begun.  The Tories had been defeated before by Mr. Gladstone’s unrivalled personality.  Now they were defeated, as they had not been for three-quarters of a century, by a party none of whose leaders possessed an outstanding personality, and by a programme which contained no item with any popular appeal.  Everybody was thinking and talking politics; every political conversation began or ended with that unknown factor, the new Labour Party; every discussion of the Labour Party involved a discussion of Socialism.

Perhaps Mr. Wells with the intuition of genius in fact foresaw what was about to happen:  perhaps it was only chance.  Anyway his proposal for an enlarged and invigorated society came at the precise moment, when the realisation of his project was in fact possible; and, of course, his own vigorous and interesting personality attracted many to us who might have moved in other directions, or indeed never have moved at all.

The inner history of the Wells Committee has never been revealed, but the composition of the Committee indicates the probable truth of the rumours that the meetings were anything but dull, though in the end the Committee arrived at an unanimous report.  Sydney Olivier was one of the “old gang,” though at that time a vigorous supporter of all sorts of changes.  Mr. Headlam has always stood at the extreme right of the movement, and in party politics has never abated his loyalty to Liberalism.  Mr. G.R.S.  Taylor and Dr. Haden Guest were at that time eager adherents of the Labour Party, and Dr. Coit, who had just fought an election for the Party, no doubt took the same line.  Mrs. Shaw by habit and Mrs. Reeves by instinct belonged to the government rather than to the opposition:  and Mr. Colegate, a judicious person, then quite young, doubtless inclined to the same side.  Last but not least, Mr. Wells himself, then as always mercurial in his opinions, but none the less intensely opinionated, and unable to believe that anybody could honestly differ from him, was by himself sufficient to disturb the harmony of any committee.