Our best excuse must be that as a matter of practical
experience English political societies do good work and present a
dignified appearance whilst they attend seriously to their proper
political business; but, to put it bluntly, they make themselves
ridiculous and attract undesirables when they affect art and philosophy.
The Arts and Crafts exhibitions, the Anti-Scrape (Society for the
Protection of Ancient Buildings), and the Art Workers' Guild, under
Morris and Crane, kept up a very intimate connection between Art and
Socialism; but the maintenance of Fabian friendly relations with them
was left mostly to me and Stewart Headlam. The rest kept aloof and
consoled themselves with the reflection--if they thought about it at
all--that the Utilitarians, though even more Philistine than the
Fabians, were astonishingly effective for their numbers.
It must be added that though the tradition that Socialism excludes the
established creeds was overthrown by the Fabians, and the claim of the
Christian Socialists to rank with the best of us was insisted on
faithfully by them, the Fabian leaders did not break the tradition in
their own practice. The contention of the Anti-Socialist Union that all
Socialists are atheists is no doubt ridiculous in the face of the fact
that the intellectual opposition to Socialism has been led exclusively
by avowed atheists like Charles Bradlaugh or agnostics like Herbert
Spencer, whilst Communism claims Jesus as an exponent; still, if the
question be raised as to whether any of the Fabian Essayists attended an
established place of worship regularly, the reply must be in the
negative.
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