The Executive Committee
published a lengthy rejoinder, and at the election of the Executive
Committee a few weeks later the members by their votes clearly indicated
their disapproval of the new scheme. At the Annual Meeting in May, 1915,
only small minorities supported the plan of reconstruction, and Mr. Cole
then and there resigned his membership of the Society, and was
subsequently followed by a few other members. A little while later the
Oxford University Fabian Society severed its connection with the parent
Society, and Mr. Cole adopted the wise course of founding a society of
his own for the advocacy of Guild Socialism.
This episode brings the history of the Society down to the present
date, and I shall conclude this chapter with a brief account of its
organisation at the time of writing, the summer of 1915.
At the end of 1913 my own long term of service as chief officer of the
Society came to an end, and my colleague for several previous years, W.
Stephen Sanders, was appointed my successor. The Executive Committee
requested me to take the new office of Honorary Secretary, and to retain
a share in the management of the Society. This position I still hold.
The tide of Socialist progress which began to rise in 1905 had turned
before 1914, and the period of depression was intensified by the war,
which is still the dominant fact in the world.
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