The Education Group has led a diligent and useful life; it
prepared a tract (No. 156), "What an Education Committee can do
(Elementary Schools)," and besides its private meetings it arranges
occasional lectures open to the public, which sometimes attract large
audiences.
The Nursery belongs to another class. When a society, formed as many
societies are, of quite young people, has existed over twenty years, the
second generation begins to be adult, and wants to be quit of its
parents. Moreover the young desire, naturally, to hear themselves talk,
whilst the others usually prefer the older and more famous personages.
So a number of younger members eagerly took up a plan which originated
in the circle of the Bland family, for forming a group confined to the
young in years or in membership in order to escape the overmastering
presence of the elderly and experienced. Sometimes they invite a senior
to talk to them and to be heckled at leisure. More often they provide
their own fare from amongst themselves. Naturally the Nursery is not
exclusively devoted to economics and politics: picnics and dances also
have their place. Some of the members eventually marry each other, and
there is no better security for prolonged happiness in marriage than
sympathy in regard to the larger issues of life. The Nursery has
produced one tract, No. 132, "A Guide to Books for Socialists,"
described in the "Wells Report" as intended "to supplement or even
replace that arid and indiscriminating catalogue, What to Read.
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