nimum wage for
labour, grants in aid for housing, freedom for municipal trading,
municipal public-houses, and reorganisation of the machinery of
education, as explained later. "The moral of it all is that what the
British Empire wants most urgently in its government is not
Conservatism, not Liberalism, not Imperialism, but brains and political
science" (p. 93).

[Illustration: GRAHAM WALLAS, IN 1891]

FOOTNOTES:

[30] Shaw has "vehemently protested" against this phrase, saying that he
"put in six years of hard committee work to the astonishment of the
vestrymen who had not expected (him) to be a man of business and a
sticker at it." But I am still of opinion that the secondary effects of
those six years on his knowledge of affairs and the lessons he has drawn
from them in his writings and speeches have been of greater value to his
innumerable readers and hearers than was his administrative diligence to
the Parish of St. Pancras.

[31] "Fabianism and the Empire," p. 26.

[32] "The Fabian Society and the War: reply by the majority of the
Executive Committee to the recent circular." (Circular on the referendum
mentioned later.)

Chapter VIII

Education: 1902-5, and the Labour Party: 1900-15

Housing--"The Education muddle and the way out"--Supporting the
Conservatives--The Education Acts of 1902 and 1903--Feeding School
Children--The Labour Representation Committee formed--The Fabian
Election Fund--Will Crooks elected in 1910--A Fabian Cabinet
Minister--Resignation of Graham Wallas--The younger generation: H.W.
Macrosty, J.F. Oakeshott, John W. Martin--Municipal Drink
Trade--Tariff Reform--The Decline of the Birth-rate.

The controversy described in the preceding chapter was not the only
business that occupied the Society at the period of the South African
War.

Amongst minor affairs was a change of premises. The office first taken,
in 1891, was at 276 Strand, in the island at that time formed by
Holywell Street which ran between the churches of St. Clement Danes and
St. Martin's in the Fields. At the end of 1899 the London County Council
acquired the property for the Kingsway and Aldwych clearance scheme, and
we found new quarters in a basement at Clement's Inn, a pleasant couple
of rooms, with plenty of light, though sometimes maliciously
misdescribed as a cellar. At the end of 1908 we removed into three much
more spacious rooms at the same address, also in "a dismal basement,"