ty becomes, in a certain set or college, the fashionable
organisation. On the whole it is true that Socialists are born and not
made, and very few of the hundreds who join at such periods stay for
more than a couple of years. The maximum University membership--on
paper--was in 1914, when it reached 541 members, of whom 101 were at
Oxford and 70 at Cambridge. But the weakness of undergraduate Socialism
is indicated by the extraordinary difficulty found in paying to the
parent Society the very moderate fee of a shilling a head per annum, and
the effect of attempting to enforce this in 1915, combined with the
propaganda of Guild Socialism, especially at Oxford, was for the moment
to break up the apparently imposing array of University Fabianism.

In 1912 Clifford Allen of Cambridge formed the University Socialist
Federation, which was in fact a Federation of Fabian Societies though
not nominally confined to them. Mr. Allen, an eloquent speaker and
admirable organiser, with most of the virtues and some of the defects of
the successful propagandist, planned the foundations of the Federation
on broad lines. It started a sumptuous quarterly, "The University
Socialist," the contents of which by no means equalled the excellence of
the print and paper. It did not survive the second number. The
Federation has held several conferences, mostly at Barrow House--of
which later--and issued various documents. Its object is to encourage
University Socialism and to found organisations in every University. It
still exists, but whether it will survive the period of depression which
has coincided with the war remains to be seen.

Lastly, amongst the organs of Fabian activity come the London Groups. In
the years of rapid growth that followed the publication of "Fabian
Essays" the London Groups maintained a fairly genuine existence. London
was teeming with political lectures, and in the decade 1889-1899 its
Government was revolutionised by the County Councils Act of 1888, the
Local Government Act of 1894, and the London Government Act of 1899
which established the Metropolitan Boroughs. Socialism, too, was a
novelty, and the few who knew about it were in request.

Anyway even with the small membership of those days, the London Groups
managed to persist, and "Fabian News" is full of reports of conferences
of Group Secretaries and accounts of Group activities. In the trough of
depression between the South African War and the Liberal victory of