rd candidate is
not only a serious representative of Socialism, but can organise his
party well and is likely to poll sufficient votes to make even his
defeat a respectable demonstration of the strength and growth of
Socialism in the constituency, the Fabian Society supports him
resolutely under all circumstances and against all other parties."

This was an extreme statement of our position, because the Society has
never, so far as I am aware, taken any action which could be described
as "throwing its weight against" a third candidate in a parliamentary
election. But it represented our policy as it might have been, if
occasion had arisen to carry it to its logical conclusion.

It was opposed, not because it was an inaccurate statement of fact, but
because a minority of the Society desired to change the policy it
described; and after the Congress was over an influential requisition
was got up by J. Ramsay Macdonald, who had been elected to the Executive
Committee in 1894, demanding that the tract be withdrawn from
circulation. The battle was joined at Clifford's Inn in October, and the
insurgents were defeated, after an exciting discussion, by 108 to 33.

* * * * *

There is little to record of the years that followed. Graham Wallas, who
had been elected to the London School Board in 1894, resigned his seat
on the Executive in 1895; Bernard Shaw became a St. Pancras Vestryman
without a contest in 1897, an event rather of literary[30] than
political significance, and in 1898 he had a serious illness which kept
him out of the movement for nearly two years; whilst at the end of 1899
Sydney Olivier was appointed Colonial Secretary of Jamaica, and spent
most of the next fourteen years in the West Indies, latterly as Governor
of Jamaica, until 1913, when he was recalled to London to be the
Secretary of the Board of Agriculture.

* * * * *

External events put an end to this period of quiescence, and the
Society, which was often derisively regarded as expert in the politics
of the parish pump, an exponent of "gas and water Socialism," was forced
to consider its attitude towards the problems of Imperialism.

War was declared by President Kruger for the South African Republic on
October 11th, 1899. Up to this point the whole of the Society, with very
few exceptions, had scouted the idea of war. "The grievances alleged,
though some of them were rea