[83] Worthy of record in connection with the new policy of the Fabian Society, although discussion is outside the scope of this work, is the movement inaugurated by Mr. Holbrook Jackson and Mr. A. R. Orage, afterwards joint-editors of the London Socialist organ, The New Age, in the foundation of the Leeds Art Club in 1905. “The object of the Leeds Art Club,” their syllabus read, “is to affirm the mutual dependence of art and ideas.” This movement, supported by a group of able lecturers, proved so successful and so stimulating as to eventuate in the formation of the Fabian Art Group (Bernard Shaw presiding over the initial meeting), the declared object of which is “to interpret the relation of Art and Philosophy to Socialism.” Admirable pamphlets and brochures have been published under its auspices; and its meetings, and the Fabian Summer School in Wales, have been addressed by many of the most brilliant and advanced thinkers in England.
[84] Fabian Tract No. 41, pages 15-16; date, 1892.
[85] The Fabian motto, suggested by Mr. Frank Podmore, runs: “For the right moment you must wait, as Fabius did most patiently when warring against Hannibal, though many censured his delays; but when the time comes you must strike hard, as Fabius did, or your waiting will be in vain and fruitless.”
[86] This book has now gone into its seventieth thousand, and has been republished in both Germany and America. It is regarded to-day as the standard text in English for Socialist lecturers and propagandists.
[87] Compare Fabian Tract No. 70: Report on Fabian Policy, the bombshell thrown by the Fabian Society into the International Socialist Workers' and Trade Union Congress, 1896.
[88] Socialism and Republicanism, in the Saturday Review, November 17th, 1900.
[89] For highly appreciative summaries of The Common Sense of Municipal Trading (Archibald Constable and Co.), and of Shaw's article, Socialism for Millionaires (first published in the Contemporary Review of February, 1896, and afterwards, in 1901, as Fabian Tract No. 107), compare Mr. Holbrook Jackson's monograph, Bernard Shaw, pages 114-131.
[90] Fabian Economics, in the Fortnightly Review, February, 1894. Mr. Mallock purposed to show how the defenders of a broad and social Conservatism, as outlined by himself, “may be able, by a fuller understanding of it, to speak to the intellect, the heart, and the hopes of the people of this country (England), like the voice of a trumpet, in comparison with which the voice of Socialism will be merely a penny whistle.” Shaw delightfully termed his rejoinder, On Mr. Mallock's Proposed Trumpet Performance, which brought forth, in the same magazine, not one, but two rejoinders from Mr. Mallock. In 1909 an attack by Mr. Mallock on Mr. Keir Hardie in the Times provoked Shaw to a fierce onslaught on his old opponent, and the Fabian Society presently republished the correspondence and the old Fortnightly article under the title, Socialism and Superior Brains. The latter, in a shilling edition, is also published by A. C. Fifield, London, in the Fabian Socialist Series.
[91] In his analysis of the situation in his native land, he insisted that Home Rule was a necessity for Ireland, because the Irish would never be content, would never feel themselves free, until Home Rule was granted them. It was not a question of logic, but a question of natural right.
[92] Socialism at the International Congress, in Cosmopolis, September, 1896.