He was appointed
both to the General Purposes and the Propaganda Sub-Committees, but
after attending two meetings of the former, and none of the latter, he
resigned from both in October, and of the seventeen meetings of the
Executive Committee during its year of office he attended only seven.
In April, 1908, he was re-elected to the Executive, again fourth on the
poll, and Mrs. Wells who had not been a candidate before was also
successful. But in the following September he resigned his membership of
the Society, assigning as reasons "disagreement with the Basis which
forms the Confession of Faith of the Society and discontent with the
general form of its activities," together with a desire "to concentrate
on the writing of novels." He explained that "a scheme which proposes to
leave mother and child economically dependent on the father is not to me
Socialism at all, but a miserable perversion of Socialism." The letter,
printed in "Fabian News," goes on to refer to his objection to the "no
compensation" clause in the Basis (the real weakness of which is that it
refers hypothetically to a complete change of system and is never
applied to any particular case[38]), and added that the opportunity for
a propaganda to the British middle classes was now over. Mrs. Wells
retained her seat on the Executive Committee till March, 1910, and soon
after that date the connection of both of them with the Society
altogether ceased.
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