for the creation of a class of Associates, entitled to all privileges except control over policy, with a view to provide a means of attracting new adherents.  The one constructive proposal, direct collective participation in Parliamentary Elections, was quite alien to Mr. Wells’ original ideas; it was forced on him, it is said, by other members of his Committee and was described by himself later on as “secondary and subordinate."[35]

The Executive Committee transmitted the Special Committee’s Report to the members of the Society accompanied by a Report of their own, drafted by Bernard Shaw and incomparably superior to the other as a piece of literature.[36]

The reply of the Executive Committee began by welcoming criticism from within the Society, of which they complained that in the past they had had too little.  An opposition, they said, was a requisite of good government.  They were prepared to welcome expansion, but they pointed out that the handsome offices proposed must be produced by the large income and not the income by the handsome offices.  A publishing business on the scale suggested could not be undertaken by an unincorporated society; moreover, at present the Society had not sufficient income to pay its officials at the market rate, or to keep out of debt to its printer.  They agreed that the Executive Committee should be enlarged, but recommended twenty-one instead of twenty-five members; and that the three proposed sub-committees be appointed, but of seven members each instead of three.  The project of triumvirates they could not endorse, both for other reasons and because all the leading members of the Society refused to serve on them, while the essence of the scheme was that the triumvirs should be the most influential members of the Society.  The abolition of the old-fashioned restrictions on admission to membership was approved, but not the proposal for a fixed subscription payable on an appointed date.  The Executive Committee did not object to the proposed new Basis as a whole (and in fact it is on record that its adoption by the Executive was only lost by 7 votes to 6); but considered that passages were open to criticism and that the time and effort necessary for carrying through any new Basis, so worded as to unite practically the whole Society, would be better spent in other ways.  A Socialist weekly would be valuable, but it would not replace “Fabian News,” which was required for the internal purposes of the Society, and capable journalists like Mr. Wells himself preferred the publicity of the “Fortnightly Review” and “The Times,” to the “Clarion” and the “Labour Leader.”  The Reply goes at great length into the difficulty of forming a Socialist Party, and into the composition and policy of the Labour Party, all admirably argued, but just a little unreal; for Bernard Shaw has never quite understood the Labour Party which he did so much to create, and at the same time he is thoroughly convinced that he sees it as it is, in the white light of his