mising career was cut short in the
trenches which protected his country from the German invaders.

In 1912 Barrow House, Derwentwater, was taken for three years, a
beautiful place with the Barrow Falls in the garden on one side, and
grounds sloping down to the lake on the other, with its own boating pier
and bathing-place. A camp of tents for men was set up, and as many as
fifty or sixty guests could be accommodated at a time. Much of the
success of the School has throughout been due to Miss Mary Hankinson,
who from nearly the beginning has been a most popular and efficient
manager. A director is selected by the Committee to act as nominal head,
and holds office usually for a week or a fortnight; but the chief of
staff is a permanent institution, and is not only business manager, but
also organiser and leader of excursions and a principal figure in all
social undertakings. A great part in arranging for the School from the
first has been taken by Dr. Lawson Dodd, to whose experience and energy
much of its success has been due.

* * * * *

The year 1911 saw the formation of the Joint Standing Committee with the
I.L.P., and this is a convenient place to describe the series of
attempts at Socialist Unity which began a long way back in the history
of the Society. For the first eight years or so of the Socialist
movement the problem of unity did not arise. Until the publication of
"Fabian Essays" the Fabian Society was small, and the S.D.F., firm in
its Marxian faith, and confident that the only way of salvation was its
particular way, had no more idea of uniting with the other societies
than the Roman Catholic Church has of union with Lutherans or
Methodists. The Socialist League was the outcome of an internal dispute,
and, if my memory is correct, the S.D.F. expected, not without reason,
that the seceders would ultimately return to the fold. The League ceased
to count when at the end of 1890 William Morris left it and
reconstituted as the Hammersmith Socialist Society the branch which met
in the little hall constructed out of the stable attached to Kelmscott
House.

In January, 1893, seven delegates from this Society held a conference
with Fabian delegates, and at a second meeting at which S.D.F. delegates
were present a scheme for promoting unity was approved. A Joint
Committee of five from each body assembled on February 23rd, when
William Morris was appointed Chairman, with Sydney Olivi