What its future may be I shall consider in the next, and concluding,
chapter.
* * * * *
I must add a final paragraph to my history. At the time I write, in the
first days of 1916, the war is with us and the end is not in sight. In
accordance with the rule which forbids it to speak, unless it has
something of value to say, the Society has made no pronouncement and
adopted no policy. A resolution registering the opinion of the majority
of a few hundred members assembled in a hall is not worth recording when
the subject is one in which millions are as concerned and virtually as
competent as themselves.
Naturally there is diversity of opinion amongst the members. On the one
hand Mr. Clifford Allen, a member of the Executive, has played a leading
part in organising opposition to conscription and opposing the policy of
the Government. On the other hand two other members of the Executive
Committee, Mr. H.J. Gillespie and Mr. C.M. Lloyd, have, since the
beginning of the war, resigned their seats in order to take commissions
in the Army. Another member, the General Secretary, after months of
vigorous service as one of the Labour Party delegates to Lord Derby's
Recruiting Committee, accepted a commission in the Army in November,
1915, in order to devote his whole time to this work, and has been
granted leave of absence for the period of the war, whilst I have
undertaken my old work in his place.
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